VARIETIES.
Most amateurs ransack the stores of dealers in foreign woods, for rich and rare varieties, leaving our own native woods for others, of deeper hue and harder grain. Yet it would be difficult to find more beautifully veined wood than chestnut, butternut, some varieties of ash, the root of the black walnut, California rosewood, and oak; all of which are indigenous.
In foreign woods there are innumerable varieties, but as comparatively few of them are to be had, there can be nothing gained to the amateur by mere enumeration. I have said comparatively few are to be had in shops, and that is true for this reason; the woods the amateur can readily obtain, are the woods of commerce; that is, those used in the arts and trades. No one imports woods at a venture, or on chance of sale. Dealers know their customers, and when, by chance, they find a captain of some foreign trader, who has a fancy lot which he has brought over, they send word to their best buyers, who come and view the lot, and take that which suits them, and the rest, worm-eaten and “wind-shaken,” it may be, is either burnt up, or thrown on one side for some button maker, who may find in the short odds and ends a profitable bargain. I shall, therefore, mention but a few of the leading varieties of choice woods, and these the most marked and contrasted. Very many differ only in the name, and, as far as mere exterior goes, are hardly distinguishable from each other, while others are positively ugly.