Teak is the produce of a tree of the genus Tectona. T. grandis is one of the largest Indian trees, and one of the most valuable, on account of its excellent timber. The trunk is neat, lofty, and of an enormous size; the leaves about twenty inches long and a foot or more wide; the flowers small, white, and fragrant, and collected into very large panicles. It is a native of various parts of India, and was introduced into Bengal by Lord Cornwallis and Colonel Kydd. The wood of this tree has been proved by long experience to be the most useful timber in Asia; it is light and easily worked, and at the same time strong and durable. It is considered equal to oak for ship-building, and has some resemblance to it in its timber; many vessels trading between this country and India are constructed of it. That which grows near the banks of the Godavery is beautifully veined, closer in the grain, and heavier than other varieties. “On the banks of the river Irrawaddy, in the Birman empire, the teak forests are unrivalled; and they rise so far over the jungle or brushwood, by which tropical forests are rendered impenetrable, that they seem almost as if one forest were raised on gigantic poles over the top of another. The teak has not the broad strength of the oak, the cedar, and some other trees; but there is a grace in its form which they do not possess.” A specimen of this tree was introduced into the Royal Gardens at Kew about seventy years ago; but from the coldness of our climate it can never become a forest-tree in this country.
Valuable as teak is found to be in ship-building, it has not yet been used in domestic building to any extent. From sixteen to eighteen thousand loads of teak are annually imported into Britain from India, principally for the Royal Dock-yards, this wood being used for certain beams and pillars in ships.
The Fir and Pine as Timber Trees.
Fir, or Pine, ranks next to oak for its valuable qualities, and if its universal application be taken into consideration, it might be thought even superior in importance. It is used for every part of houses, and extensively in ship-building, in the fittings-up, while it constitutes the only material for masts, for which purpose its lightness, and the great length and straightness of the trunk, peculiarly fit it.
Pine, or fir, is imported into this kingdom under the various names of timber, battens, deals, laths, masts, yards, and spars, according to the size or form into which the tree is sawed. It is called timber when the tree is only squared into a straight beam of the length of the trunk, and from not less than eight or nine inches square, up to sixteen or eighteen square; fifty cubic feet is a load of timber. Deals vary in length and thickness from eight to sixteen feet, eleven inches wide, and from one and a half to three and a half inches thick. Four hundred superficial feet of one and a half inch plank make a load. Battens are small long pieces of fir about three inches wide and one inch thick. Masts, yards, and spars, are the trunks of small trees simply barked and topped.
The pine is, generally speaking, an evergreen, and the wood becomes harder and more durable when the situation is cold, and also when the growth of the tree is slow. Norway, Sweden, the shores of the Baltic, and Canada, are the chief localities of the forests of pine. England is supplied principally from Canada, not because the timber from that country is better than that derived from the north of Europe, but because our timber duties fall heavily on the European pine, the object of the legislature being to encourage the importation of pine from our North American colonies.
Almost the whole of what is now called Canada was once an immense pine forest. With respect to the Baltic region, Dr. Clarke said, that if we take up a map of Sweden, and imagine the Gulf of Bothnia to be surrounded by one contiguous unbroken forest, as ancient as the world, consisting principally of pine trees, with a few mingling birch and juniper trees, we shall have a general and tolerably correct notion of the real appearance of the country. The same writer observed, that the King of Sweden might travel from sunrise to sunset through some parts of his territories, without meeting any other of his subjects than pine trees.
The Norway Spruce Fir.
The species of Spruce Fir (Pinus abies), represented in the engraving, has been known as a British tree for more than three hundred years, but Norway seems, as far as it can be ascertained, to be its native country. It differs from the Scotch fir in general appearance, as well as in the structure of its leaves and cones. The beautiful feathery appearance of its foliage is very striking, but the extreme regularity of its form rather detracts from the beauty of a landscape when it is too often repeated; it is easily known by its long pendulous cones, as well as by its formal shape. The spruce fir is found in great abundance in all the Norwegian forests; it is also spread over the whole of the north of Europe, and part of Asia, and it occurs on most of the mountain-ranges of both these quarters of the globe; in favourable situations it attains a great height, as much at times as 150 feet.
