WOODS.

The following different kinds of wood are used in the manufacture of Furniture.

FOR THE BEST FURNITURE.

For Common Furniture and Interior Fittings.

Also some selections of Honduras mahogany when finely marked, and different varieties of the Eucalyptus.

The most expensive of these are used in veneers; and in the more ornamental and polychromatic marquetry, holly, horse chestnut, sycamore, pear tree and plum tree are used, being woods easily stained.

Amongst some of the rarer and more beautifully marked woods, used in small quantities, are the following:—

TEAK is an extremely strong East India wood; there is also an African teak (Sierra Leone), called African oak.

SHISHAM or BLACKWOOD (Dalbergia Sps) is a heavy close-grained wood, dark brown in color, resembling ebony when polished, and is much used for furniture in India.

SANDAL WOOD, TEAK, MANGO WOOD.—Sir George Birdwood, in "Indian Arts," gives a complete list of these Indian woods, with their botanical names and other valuable information.

For a more complete list of the different woods used by cabinet makers, the reader is referred to Mr. J. Hungerford Pollen's "Introduction to the South Kensington Collection"; to many of these he has been able, after much research, to give their botanical names, a task rendered somewhat difficult owing to the popular name of the wood being derived from some peculiar marking or colouring but giving no clue to its botanical status. Amongst these are tulip wood, rose wood, king wood, pheasant wood, partridge wood, and snake wood. It is worthy of remark that, whereas in England the terms "king wood" and "tulip wood" represent the former, a wood of rich dark reddish-brown color, or "purple madder," and the latter one of a yellowish-red, prettily-streaked, in France these terms have exactly the reverse equivalents. These were very favourite veneers in the best French marqueterie furniture described in Chapter VI., and are frequently found, the one as bordering to relieve the panel or drawer front of the other.

In the Museum at Kew Gardens, and also in the Colonial Galleries of the Imperial Institute, are excellent collections of many rare woods well worth examination.

Some particulars of the different woods mentioned in the Bible, from which examples of Ancient Furniture were manufactured, and to which reference has been made in Chapter I.

These notes have been kindly supplied by Dr. Edward Clapton, whose collection of specimens of these scarce woods is of great interest.

SHITTIM WOOD is the wood of the Shittah tree, or Acacia Seyal. This spiny tree especially abounded in the peninsula of Sinai and around the Dead Sea, but was also found in various parts of Syria, Arabia, and Africa. In the present day the shittah trees are very few and small, but in the time of Moses there were forests of them, and of a size sufficient to form long and wide planks. It is, as Jerome says, "a very strong wood of incredible lightness and beauty," and, he adds, "it is not subject to decay." This corresponds to the translation of the Hebrew term for shittim wood in the Septuagint, which is "incorruptible wood." Though light, it is hard, strong, and durable. As a proof of this, the Ark, and other furniture of the Tabernacle, which were made of shittim wood, must have lasted for a period of some 500 years before all traces of them were lost. Dean Stanley remarks that the plural word shittim was given to the wood of the shittah tree from the tangled thickets into which the stems of the trees expand.

ALMUG.—The wood of the Pterocarpus Santalinus, a large tree of the order "Leguminosœ."—The wood is very hard, has a reddish color, and takes a fine polish. It is a native of India and Ceylon, whence it was in Solomon's time conveyed to Ophir, on the east coast of Africa, and from Ophir to Palestine; "and the navy also of Hiram, that brought gold from Ophir, brought in great plenty of almug trees, and the king made of the almug trees pillars for the house of the Lord, and for the king's house, harps also and psalteries for singers." 1 Kings x. 11, 12. Almug is not the same as Algum, which grew on Lebanon with the cedar and fir. 2 Chron. ii. 8.

THYINE WOOD.—The wood of the Thuja Articulata, now named Callitris Quadrivalvis, a tree of the cypress sub-order of coniferæ, from 20 to 30 feet high. It is a native of Algiers and the Atlas range of North Africa. The wood is dark colored, hard, and fragrant, taking a fine polish; it yields an odoriferous resin called Sanderach, which was much used by the Romans for incense in the worship of their gods. Thyine takes its name from "to burn incense." It was much prized by the ancient Greeks and Romans, not only because it was considered sacred but also on account of the beauty of the wood for various ornamental purposes. Pliny speaks of the mania of his countrymen for ornaments made of this wood, and tells us that when Roman ladies were upbraided by their husbands for their extravagance in pearls, they retorted upon them for their excessive fondness for tables made of thyine wood. So great a rage was there for ornamental cabinet work in ancient Rome that Cicero had a table made of it that cost £9,000. Ornaments made of this wood can be seen in the Museum at Kew, presented by the late Jerome Napoleon. The ceiling and floor of the celebrated Mosque of Cordova are of thyine wood, and it is also referred to in the Bible.