sican especially), ilex, and beech were
used for veneering boxes, desks, and small work. Besides these the
Romans used the citrus, Syrian terebinth, maple, palm (cut
transversely), holly, root of the elder, and poplar; the centres of the
trees being most prized for colour and markings. [See note giving
extracts from Pliny.[1]]

A few notes on the exceptional scantlings of timber in antiquity may be
interesting, though not strictly belonging to our subject. A stick of
fir prepared to repair a bridge over the Naumachia in the time of Nero
was left unused for some time to satisfy public curiosity. It measured
120 feet by 2 feet the entire length. The mast of the vessel which
brought the large obelisk from Egypt, afterwards set up in the Circus
Maximus, and now in front of S. John Lateran, was 100 feet by 1-1/2
feet, and the tree out of which it was cut required four men, holding
hands, to surround it. A stick of cedar, cut in Cyprus and used as the
mast of an undecireme, or 11 banked galley of Demetrius, took three men
to span the tree out of which it was cut. It was the exceptional sizes
of such pieces of timber, and veneers cut from them, which made the
value of tables in Rome.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Pliny, Book 16, Chap. 83--"Glue, too, plays one of the principal
parts in all veneering and works of marquetry. For this purpose the
workmen usually employ wood with a threaded vein, to which they give the
name of 'ferulea,' from its resemblance to the grain of the giant
fennel, this part of the wood being preferred from its being dotted and
wavy." Chap. 84--"The wood, too, of the beech is easily worked, although
it is brittle and soft. Cut into thin layers of veneer it is very
flexible, but is only used for the construction of boxes and desks. The
wood, too, of the holm oak is cut into veneers of remarkable thinness,
the colour of which is far from unsightly; but it is more particularly
where it is exposed to friction that this wood is valued, as being one
to be depended upon; in the axle trees of wheels, for instance, for
which the ash is also employed, on account of its pliancy, the holm oak
for its hardness, and the elm for the union in it of both these
qualities.... The best woods for cutting into layers and employing as a
veneer for covering others are the citrus, the terebinth, the different
varieties of the maple, the box, the palm, the holly, the holm oak, the
root of the elder, and the poplar. The alder furnishes, als