s, spoons, and beaters, which belong to the kitchen and
pantry, are made of this species of wood. Beech picnic plates are made
by the million, a single machine turning out 75,000 a day. The wood
has a long list of miscellaneous uses and enters in a great variety of
commodities. In every region where it grows in commercial quantities
it is made into boxes, baskets, and crating. Beech baskets are chiefly
employed in shipping fruit, berries, and vegetables. In Maine thin
veneer of beech is made specially for the Sicily orange and lemon
trade. This is shipped in bulk and the boxes are made abroad. Beech is
also an important handle wood, although not in the same class with
hickory. It is not selected because of toughness and resiliency, as
hickory is, and generally goes into plane, handsaw, pail, chisel, and
flatiron handles. Recent statistics show that in the production of
slack cooperage staves, only two woods, red gum and pine, stood above
beech in quantity, while for heading, pine alone exceeded it. It is
also used in turnery, for shoe lasts, butcher blocks, ladder rounds,
etc. Abroad it is very extensively used by the carpenter, millwright,
and wagon maker, in turnery and wood carving. Most abundant in the
Ohio and Mississippi basin, but found from Maine to Wisconsin and
southward to Florida.

BIRCH

=13. Cherry Birch= (_Betula lenta_) (Black Birch, Sweet Birch, Mahogany
Birch, Wintergreen Birch). Medium-sized tree, very common. Wood of
beautiful reddish or yellowish brown, and much of it nicely figured,
of compact structure, is straight in grain, heavy, hard, strong, takes
a fine polish, and considerably used as imitation of mahogany. The
wood shrinks considerably in drying, works well and stands well, but
is not durable in contact with the soil. The medullary rays in birch
are very fine and close and not easily seen. The sweet birch is very
handsome, with satiny luster, equalling cherry, and is too costly a
wood to be profitably used for ordinary purposes, but there are both
high and low grades of birch, the latter consisting chiefly of sapwood
and pieces too knotty for first class commodities. This cheap material
swells the supply of box lumber, and a little of it is found wherever
birch passes through sawmills. The frequent objections against sweet
birch as box lumber and crating material are that it is hard to nail
and is inclined to split. It is also used for veneer picnic plate