Wood and Forest

(3) The wood of most exogens is made up of two parts, a lighter part called the sap-wood or splint-wood or alburnum, and a darker part called the heart-wood or duramen, Fig. 7. Sap-wood is really immature heartwood. The difference in color between them is very marked in some woods, as in lignum vitae and black walnut, and very slight in others, as spruce and bass. Indeed, some species never form a distinct heart-wood, birch (Betula alba) being an example.

In a living tree, sap-wood and heart-wood perform primarily quite different functions. The sap-wood carries the water from the roots to the leaves, stores away starch at least in winter, and in other ways assists the life of the tree. The proportional amount of sapwood varies greatly, often, as in long-leaf pine, constituting 40 per cent. of the stem.

As the sap-wood grows older, its cells become choked so that the sap can no longer flow thru them. It loses its protoplasm and starch and becomes heartwood, in which all cells are dead and serve only the mechanical function of holding up the great weight of the tree and in resisting wind pressures. This is the reason why a tree may become decayed and hollow and yet be alive and bear fruit. In a tree that is actually dead the sap-wood rots first.

Chemical substances infiltrate into the cell walls of heart-wood and hence it has a darker color than the sap-wood. Persimmon turns black, walnut purplish brown, sumac yellow, oak light brown, tulip and poplar yellowish, redwood and cedar brownish red. Many woods, as mahogany and oak, darken under exposure, which shows that the substances producing the color are oxidizable and unstable. Wood dyes are obtained by boiling and distilling such woods as sumach, logwood, red sanders, and fustic. Many woods also acquire distinct odors, as camphor, sandalwood, cedar, cypress, pine and mahogany, indicating the presence of oil.

As a rule heart-wood is more valuable for timber, being harder, heavier, and drier than sap-wood. In woods like hickory and ash, however, which are used for purposes that require pliability, as in baskets, or elasticity as in handles of rakes and hoes, sap-wood is more valuable than heart-wood.

In a transverse section of a conifer, for example Douglas spruce, Fig. 8, the wood is seen to lie in concentric rings, the outer part of the ring being darker in color than the inner part. In reality each of these rings is a section of an irregular hollow cone, each cone enveloping its inner neighbor. Each cone ordinarily constitutes a year's growth, and therefore there is a greater number of them at the base of a tree than higher up. These cones vary greatly in thickness, or, looking at a cross-section, the rings vary in width; in general, those at the center being thicker than those toward the bark. Variations from year to year may also be noticed, showing that the tree was well nourished one year and poorly nourished another year. Rings, however, do not always indicate a year's growth. "False rings" are sometimes formed by a cessation in the growth due to drouth, fire or other accident, followed by renewed growth the same season.

In a radial section of a log, Fig. 8, these "rings" appear as a series of parallel lines and if one could examine a long enough log these lines would converge, as would the cut edges in a nest of cones, if they were cut up thru the center, as in Fig. 9.

In a tangential section, the lines appear as broad bands, and since almost no tree grows perfectly straight, these lines are wavy, and give the characteristic pleasing "grain" of wood. Fig. 27, p. 35. The annual rings can sometimes be discerned in the bark as well as in the wood, as in corks, which are made of the outer bark of the cork oak, a product of southern Europe and northern Africa. Fig. 10.

The growth of the wood of exogenous trees takes place thru the ability, already noted, of protoplasmic cells to divide. The cambium cells, which have very thin walls, are rectangular in shape, broader tangentially than radially, and tapering above and below to a chisel edge, Fig. 11. After they have grown somewhat radially, partition walls form across them in the longitudinal, tangential direction, so that in place of one initial cell, there are two daughter cells radially disposed. Each of these small cells grows and re-divides, as in Fig. 12. Finally the innermost cell ceases to divide, and uses its protoplasm to become thick and hard wood. In like manner the outermost cambium cell becomes bast, while the cells between them continue to grow and divide, and so the process goes on. In nearly all stems, there is much more abundant formation of wood than of bast cells. In other words, more cambium cells turn to wood than to bast.

In the spring when there is comparatively little light and heat, when the roots and leaves are inactive and feeble, and when the bark, split by winter, does not bind very tightly, the inner cambium cells produce radially wide wood cells with relatively thin walls. These constitute the spring wood. But in summer the jacket of bark binds tightly, there is plenty of heat and light, and the leaves and roots are very active, so that the cambium cells produce thicker walled cells, called summer wood. During the winter the trees rest, and no development takes place until spring, when the large thin-walled cells are formed again, making a sharp contrast with those formed at the end of the previous season.

It is only at the tips of the branches that the cambium cells grow much in length; so that if a nail were driven into a tree twenty years old at, say, four feet from the ground, it would still be four feet from the ground one hundred years later.

Looking once more at the cross-section, say, of spruce, the inner portion of each ring is lighter in color and softer in texture than the outer portion. On a radial or tangential section, one's finger nail can easily indent the inner portion of the ring, tho the outer dark part of the ring may be very hard. The inner, light, soft portion of the ring is the part that grows in the spring and early summer, and is called the "spring wood" while the part that grows later in the season is called "summer wood." As the summer wood is hard and heavy, it largely determines the strength and weight of the wood, so that as a rule, the greater the proportion of the summer growth, the better the wood. This can be controlled to some extent by proper forestry methods, as is done in European larch forests, by "underplanting" them with beech.

In a normal tree, the summer growth forms a greater proportion of the wood formed during the period of thriftiest growth, so that in neither youth nor old age, is there so great a proportion of summer wood as in middle age.

It will help to make clear the general structure of wood if one imagines the trunk of a tree to consist of a bundle of rubber tubes crushed together, so that they assume angular shapes and have no spaces between them. If the tubes are laid in concentric layers, first a layer which has thin walls, then successive layers having thicker and thicker walls, then suddenly a layer of thin-walled tubes and increasing again to thick-walled ones and so on, such an arrangement would represent the successive annual "rings" of conifers.

The medullary rays. While most of the elements in wood run longitudinally in the log, it is also to be noted that running at right angles to these and radially to the log, are other groups of cells called pith rays or medullary rays (Latin, medulla, which means pith). These are the large "silver flakes" to be seen in quartered oak, which give it its beautiful and distinctive grain, Fig. 32, p. 37. They appear as long, grayish lines on a cross-section, as broad, shining bands on the radial section, and as short, thick lines tapering at each end on the tangential section. In other words, they are like flat, rectangular plates standing on edge and radiating lengthwise from the center of the tree. They vary greatly in size in different woods. In sycamore they are very prominent, Fig. 13. In oak they are often several hundred cells wide (i.e., up and down in the tree). This may amount to an inch or two. They are often twenty cells thick, tapering to one cell at the edge. In oak very many are also small, even microscopic. But in the conifers and also in some of the broad-leaved trees, altho they can be discerned with the naked eye on a split radial surface, still they are all very small. In pine there are some 15,000 of them to a square inch of a tangential section. They are to be found in all exogens. In a cross-section, say of oak, Fig. 14, it can readily be seen that some pith rays begin at the center of the tree and some farther out. Those that start from the pith are formed the first year and are called primary pith rays, while those that begin in a subsequent year, starting at the cambium of that year, are called secondary rays.

The function of the pith rays is twofold. (1) They transfer formative material from one part of a stem to another, communicating with both wood and bark by means of the simple and bordered pits in them, and (2) they bind the trunk together from pith to bark. On the other hand their presence makes it easier for the wood to split radially.

The substance of which they are composed is "parenchyma" (Greek, beside, to pour), which also constitutes the pith, the rays forming a sort of connecting link between the first and last growth of the tree, as the cambium cells form new wood each year.

If a cambium cell is opposite to a pith ray, it divides crosswise (transversely) into eight or ten cells one above another, which stretch out radially, retaining their protoplasm, and so continue the pith ray. As the tree grows larger, new, or secondary medullary rays start from the cambium then active, so that every year new rays are formed both thinner and shorter than the primary rays, Fig. 14.

Now suppose that laid among the ordinary thin-walled tubes were quite large tubes, so that one could tell the "ring" not only by the thin walls but by the presence of large tubes. That would represent the ring-porous woods, and the large tubes would be called vessels, or tracheæ. Suppose again that these large tubes were scattered in disorder thru the layers. This arrangement would represent the diffuse-porous woods.

By holding up to the light, thin cross-sections of spruce or pine, Fig. 15, oak or ash, Fig. 16, and bass or maple, Fig. 17, these three quite distinct arrangements in the structure may be distinguished. This fact has led to the classification of woods according to the presence and distribution of "pores," or as they are technically called, "vessels" or "tracheae." By this classification we have:

(1) Non-porous woods, which comprise the conifers, as pine and spruce.

(2) Ring-porous woods, in which the pores appear (in a cross-section) in concentric rings, as in chestnut, ash and elm.

(3) Diffuse-porous woods, in which (in a cross-section) the rings are scattered irregularly thru the wood, as in bass, maple and yellow poplar.

In order to fully understand the structure of wood, it is necessary to examine it still more closely thru the microscope, and since the three classes of wood, non-porous, ring-porous and diffuse-porous, differ considerably in their minute structure, it is well to consider them separately, taking the simplest first.

Non-porous woods. In examining thru the microscope a transverse section of white pine, Fig. 18:

(1) The most noticeable characteristic is the regularity of arrangement of the cells. They are roughly rectangular and arranged in ranks and files.

(2) Another noticeable feature is that they are arranged in belts, the thickness of their walls gradually increasing as the size of the cells diminishes. Then the large thin-walled cells suddenly begin again, and so on. The width of one of these belts is the amount of a single year's growth, the thin-walled cells being those that formed in spring, and the thick-walled ones those that formed in summer, the darker color of the summer wood as well as its greater strength being caused by there being more material in the same volume.

(3) Running radially (up and down in the picture) directly thru the annual belts or rings are to be seen what looks like fibers. These are the pith or medullary rays. They serve to transfer formative material from one part of the stem to another and to bind the tree together from pith to bark.

(4) Scattered here and there among the regular cells, are to be seen irregular gray or yellow dots which disturb the regularity of the arrangement. These are resin ducts. (See cross-section of white pine, Fig. 18.) They are not cells, but openings between cells, in which the resin, an excretion of the tree, accumulates, oozing out when the tree is injured. At least one function of resin is to protect the tree from attacks of fungi.

Looking now at the radial section, Fig. 18:

(5) The first thing to notice is the straightness of the long cells and their overlapping where they meet endwise, like the ends of two chisels laid together, Fig. 11.

(6) On the walls of the cells can be seen round spots called "pits." These are due to the fact that as the cell grows, the cell walls thicken, except in these small spots, where the walls remain thin and delicate. The pit in a cell wall always coincides with the pit in an adjoining cell, there being only a thin membrane between, so that there is practically free communication of fluids between the two cells. In a cross-section the pit appears as a canal, the length of which depends upon the thickness of the walls. In some cells, the thickening around the pits becomes elevated, forming a border, perforated in the center. Such pits are called bordered pits. These pits, both simple and bordered, are waterways between the different cells. They are helps in carrying the sap up the tree.

(7) The pith rays are also to be seen running across and interwoven in the other cells. It is to be noticed that they consist of several cells, one above another.

In the tangential section, Fig. 18:

(8) The straightness and overlapping of the cells is to be seen again, and

(9) The numerous ends of the pith rays appear.

In a word, the structure of coniferous wood is very regular and simple, consisting mainly of cells of one sort, the pith rays being comparatively unnoticeable. This uniformity is what makes the wood of conifers technically valuable.

The cells of conifers are called tracheids, meaning "like tracheæ." They are cells in which the end walls persist, that is, are not absorbed and broken down when they meet end to end. In other words, conifers do not have continuous pores or vessels or "tracheæ," and hence are called "non-porous" woods.

But in other woods, the ends of some cells which meet endwise are absorbed, thus forming a continuous series of elements which constitute an open tube. Such tubes are known as pores, or vessels, or "tracheæ," and sometimes extend thru the whole stem. Besides this marked difference between the porous and non-porous woods, the porous woods are also distinguished by the fact that instead of being made up, like the conifers of cells of practically only one kind, namely tracheids, they are composed of several varieties of cells. Besides the tracheae and tracheids already noted are such cells as "wood fiber," "fibrous cells," and "parenchyma." Fig. 19. Wood fiber proper has much thickened lignified walls and no pits, and its main function is mechanical support. Fibrous cells are like the wood fibers except that they retain their protoplasm. Parenchyma is composed of vertical groups of short cells, the end ones of each group tapering to a point, and each group originates from the transverse division of one cambium cell. They are commonly grouped around the vessels (tracheæ). Parenchyma constitutes the pith rays and other similar fibers, retains its protoplasm, and becomes filled with starch in autumn.

The most common type of structure among the broad-leaved trees contains tracheæ, trachæids, woody fiber, fibrous cells and parenchyma. Examples are poplars, birch, walnut, linden and locust. In some, as ash, the tracheids are wanting; apple and maple have no woody fiber, and oak and plum no fibrous cells.

This recital is enough to show that the wood of the broad-leaved trees is much more complex in structure than that of the conifers. It is by means of the number and distribution of these elements that particular woods are identified microscopically. See p. 289.

Ring-porous woods. Looking thru the microscope at a cross-section of ash, a ring-porous wood, Fig. 20:

• (1) The large round or oval pores or vessels grouped mostly in the spring wood first attract attention. Smaller ones, but still quite distinct, are to be seen scattered all thru the wood. It is by the number and distribution of these pores that the different oak woods are distinguished, those in white oak being smaller and more numerous, while in red oak they are fewer and larger. It is evident that the greater their share in the volume, the lighter in weight and the weaker will be the wood. In a magnified cross-section of some woods, as black locust, white elm and chestnut, see Chap. III, beautiful patterns are to be seen composed of these pores. It is because of the size of these pores and their great number that chestnut is so weak.
  
  
• (2) The summer wood is also distinguishable by the fact that, as with the conifers, its cells are smaller and its cell walls thicker than those of the spring wood. The summer wood appears only as a narrow, dark line along the largest pores in each ring.
  
  
• (3) The lines of the pith rays are very plain in some woods, as in oak. No. 47, Chap. III.
  
  
• (4) The irregular arrangement and
  
  
• (5) Complex structure are evident, and these are due to the fact that the wood substance consists of a number of different elements and not one (tracheids) as in the conifers.

Looking at the radial section, Fig. 20:

• (6) If the piece is oak, the great size of the medullary rays is most noticeable. Fig. 32, p. 37. They are often an inch or more wide; that is, high, as they grow in the tree. In ash they are plain, seen thru the microscope, but are not prominent.
  
  
• (7) The interweaving of the different fibers and the variety of their forms show the structure as being very complex.
  
  

In the tangential section, Fig. 20:

• (8) The pattern of the grain is seen to be marked not so much by the denseness of the summer wood as by the presence of the vessels (pores).
  
  
• (9) The ends of the pith rays are also clear.

In diffuse porous woods, the main features to be noticed are: In the transverse section, Fig. 21:

• (1) The irregularity with which the pores are scattered,
  
  
• (2) The fine line of dense cells which mark the end of the year's growth,
  
  
• (3) The radiating pith rays,
  
  
• (4) The irregular arrangement and,
  
  
• (5) The complex structure.

In the radial section, Fig. 21:

• (6) The pith rays are evident. In sycamore, No. 53, Chap. III, they are quite large.
  
  
• (7) The interweaving of the fibers is to be noted and also their variety.

In the tangential section, Fig. 21:

• (8) The grain is to be traced only dimly, but the fibers are seen to run in waves around the pith rays.
  
  
• (9) The pith rays, the ends of which are plainly visible.

THE GRAIN OF WOOD.

The term "grain" is used in a variety of meanings which is likely to cause confusion. This confusion may be avoided, at least in part, by distinguishing between grain and texture, using the word grain to refer to the arrangement or direction of the wood elements, and the word texture to refer to their size or quality, so far as these affect the structural character of the wood. Hence such qualifying adjectives as coarse and fine, even and uneven, straight and cross, including spiral, twisted, wavy, curly, mottled, bird's-eye, gnarly, etc., may all be applied to grain to give it definite meaning, while to texture the proper modifying adjectives are coarse and fine, even and uneven.

Usually the word grain means the pattern or "figure" formed by the distinction between the spring wood and the summer wood. If the annual rings are wide, the wood is, in common usage, called "coarse grained," if narrow, "fine grained," so that of two trees of the same species, one may be coarse grained and the other fine grained, depending solely on the accident of fast or slow growth.

The terms coarse grain and fine grain are also frequently used to distinguish such ring-porous woods as have large prominent pores, like chestnut and ash, from those having small or no pores, as cherry and lignum vitae. A better expression in this case would be coarse and fine textured. When such coarse textured woods are stained, the large pores in the spring wood absorb more stain than the smaller elements in the summer wood, and hence the former part appears darker. In the "fine grained" (or better, fine textured,) woods the pores are absent or are small and scattered, and the wood is hard, so that they are capable of taking a high polish. This indicates the meaning of the words coarse and fine in the mind of the cabinet-maker, the reference being primarily to texture.

If the elements of which a wood are composed are of approximately uniform size, it would be said to have a uniform texture, as in white pine, while uniform grain would mean, that the elements, tho of varying sizes, were evenly distributed, as in the diffuse-porous woods.

The term "grain" also refers to the regularity of the wood structure. An ideal tree would be composed of a succession of regular cones, but few trees are truly circular in cross-section and even in those that are circular, the pith is rarely in the center, showing that one side of the tree, usually the south side, is better nourished than the other, Fig. 14, p. 23.

The normal direction of the fibers of wood is parallel to the axis of the stem in which they grow. Such wood is called "straight-grained," Fig. 22, but there are many deviations from this rule. Whenever the grain of the wood in a board is, in whole or in part, oblique to the sides of the board, it is called "cross-grained." An illustration of this is a bend in the fibers, due to a bend in the whole tree or to the presence of a neighboring knot. This bend makes the board more difficult to plane. In many cases, probably in more cases than not, the wood fibers twist around the tree. (See some of the logs in Fig. 107, p. 253.) This produces "spiral" or "twisted" grain.

Often, as in mahogany and sweet gum, the fibers of several layers twist first in one direction and then those of the next few layers twist the other way, Fig. 24. Such wood is peculiarly cross-grained, and is of course hard to plane smooth. But when a piece is smoothly finished the changing reflection of light from the surface gives a beautiful appearance, which can be enhanced by staining and polishing. It constitutes the characteristic "grain" of striped mahogany, Fig. 23. It is rarely found in the inner part of the tree.

Sometimes the grain of wood is "cross," because it is "wavy" either in a radial or a tangential section, as in maple, Fig. 25, and Fig. 26.

"Curly grain" refers to the figure of circlets and islets and contours, often of great beauty, caused by cutting a flat surface in crooked-grained wood. See Fig. 27, curly long-leaf pine, and Fig. 28, yellow poplar. When such crookedness is fine and the fibers are contorted and, as it were, crowded out of place, as is common in and near the roots of trees, the effect is called "burl," Fig. 29. The term burl is also used to designate knots and knobs on tree trunks, Fig. 31. Burl is used chiefly in veneers.

Irregularity of grain is often caused by the presence of adventitious and dormant buds, which may be plainly seen as little knobs on the surface of some trees under the bark. In most trees, these irregularities are soon buried and smoothed over by the successive annual layers of wood, but in some woods there is a tendency to preserve the irregularities. On slash (tangent) boards of such wood, a great number of little circlets appear, giving a beautiful grain, as in "Bird's-eye maple," Fig. 30. These markings are found to predominate in the inner part of the tree. This is not at all a distinct variety of maple, as is sometimes supposed, but the common variety, in which the phenomenon frequently appears. Logs of great value, having bird's-eyes, have often unsuspectingly been chopped up for fire wood.

The term "grain" may also mean the "figure" formed by the presence of pith rays, as in oak, Fig. 32, or beech, or the word "grain" may refer simply to the uneven deposit of coloring matter as is common in sweet gum, Fig. 33, black ash, or Circassian walnut.

The presence of a limb constitutes a knot and makes great irregularity in the grain of wood, Fig. 34. In the first place, the fibers on the upper and lower sides of the limb behave differently, those on the lower side running uninterruptedly from the stem into the limb, while on the upper side the fibers bend aside making an imperfect connection. Consequently to split a knot it is always necessary to start the split from the lower side. On the other hand it is easier to split around a knot than thru it. The texture as well as the grain of wood is modified by the presence of a branch. The wood in and around a knot is much harder than the main body of the trunk on account of the crowding together of the elements. Knots are the remnants of branches left in the trunk. These once had all the parts of the trunk itself, namely bark, cambium, wood, and pith. Normally, branches grow from the pith, tho some trees, as Jack pine and redwood, among the conifers, and most of the broad-leaf trees have the power of putting out at any time adventitious buds which may develop into branches. When a branch dies, the annual layer of wood no longer grows upon it, but the successive layers of wood on the trunk itself close tighter and tighter around it, until it is broken off. Then, unless it has begun to decay, it is successively overgrown by annual layers, so that no sign of it appears until the trunk is cut open. A large trunk perfectly clean of branches on the outside may have many knots around its center, remnants of branches which grew there in its youth, as in Fig. 34, and Fig. 8, p. 19. The general effect of the presence of a knot is, that the fibers that grow around and over it are bent, and this, of course, produces crooked grain.

Following are the designations given to different knots by lumbermen: A sound knot is one which is solid across its face and is as hard as the wood surrounding it and fixed in position. A pin knot is sound, but not over ¼" in diameter. A standard knot is sound, but not over 1½" in diameter. A large knot is sound, and over 1½" in diameter. A spike knot is one sawn in a lengthwise position. A dead, or, loose knot is one not firmly held in place by growth or position.

(4) Pith. At the center or axis of the tree is the pith or medulla, Fig. 34. In every bud, that is, at the apex of every stem and branch, the pith is the growing part; but as the stem lengthens and becomes overgrown by successive layers of wood the pith loses its vital function. It does not grow with the plant except at the buds. It varies in thickness, being very small,—hardly more than 1/16", in cedar and larch,—and so small in oak as to be hardly discernible; and what there is of it turns hard and dark. In herbs and shoots it is relatively large, Fig. 5, p. 15, in a three-year old shoot of elder, for example, being as wide as the wood. In elder, moreover, it dies early and pulverizes, leaving the stem hollow. Its function is one of only temporary value to the plant.

THE STRUCTURE OF WOOD.

• References:*
  • Roth, Forest Bull. No. 10, pp. 11-23.
  • Boulger, pp. 1-39.
  • Sickles, pp. 11-20.
  • Pinchot, Forest Bull. No. 24, I, pp. 11-24.
  • Keeler, pp. 514-517.
  • Curtis, pp. 62-85.
  • Woodcraft, 15: 3, p. 90.
  • Bitting, Wood Craft, 5: 76, 106, 144, 172, (June-Sept. 1906).
  • Ward, pp. 1-38.
  • Encyc. Brit., 11th Ed., "Plants," p. 741.
  • Strasburger, pp. 120-144 and Part II, Sec. II.
  • Snow, pp. 7-9, 183.

* For general bibliography, see p. 4.

Chapter II.

PROPERTIES OF WOOD.

There are many properties of wood,—some predominant in one species, some in another,—that make it suitable for a great variety of uses. Sometimes it is a combination of properties that gives value to a wood. Among these properties are hygroscopicity, shrinkage, weight, strength, cleavability, elasticity, hardness, and toughness.

THE HYGROSCOPICITY¹ OF WOOD.

It is evident that water plays a large part in the economy of the tree. It occurs in wood in three different ways: In the sap which fills or partly fills the cavities of the wood cells, in the cell walls which it saturates, and in the live protoplasm, of which it constitutes 90 per cent. The younger the wood, the more water it contains, hence the sap-wood contains much more than the heart-wood, at times even twice as much.

In fresh sap-wood, 60 per cent. of the water is in the cell cavities, 35 per cent. in the cell walls, and only 5 per cent. in the protoplasm. There is so much water in green wood that a sappy pole will soon sink when set afloat. The reason why there is much less water in heart-wood is because its cells are dead and inactive, and hence without sap and without protoplasm. There is only what saturates the cell walls. Even so, there is considerable water in heart-wood.²

The lighter kinds have the most water in the sap-wood, thus sycamore has more than hickory.

Curiously enough, a tree contains about as much water in winter as in summer. The water is held there, it is supposed, by capillary attraction, since the cells are inactive, so that at all times the water in wood keeps the cell walls distended.

THE SHRINKAGE OF WOOD.

When a tree is cut down, its water at once begins to evaporate. This process is called "seasoning."* In drying, the free water within the cells keeps the cell walls saturated; but when all the free water has been removed, the cell walls begin to yield up their moisture. Water will not flow out of wood unless it is forced out by heat, as when green wood is put on a fire. Ordinarily it evaporates slowly.

* See Handwork in Wood , Chapter III.

The water evaporates faster from some kinds of wood than from other kinds, e. g., from white pine than from oak, from small pieces than from large, and from end grain than from a longitudinal section; and it also evaporates faster in high than in low temperatures.

Evaporation affects wood in three respects, weight, strength, and size. The weight is reduced, the strength is increased, and shrinkage takes place. The reduction in weight and increase in strength, important as they are, are of less importance than the shrinkage, which often involves warping and other distortions. The water in wood affects its size by keeping the cell walls distended.

If all the cells of a piece of wood were the same size, and had walls the same thickness, and all ran in the same direction, then the shrinkage would be uniform. But, as we have seen, the structure of wood is not homogeneous. Some cellular elements are large, some small, some have thick walls, some thin walls, some run longitudinally and some (the pith rays) run radially. The effects will be various in differently shaped pieces of wood but they can easily be accounted for if one bears in mind these three facts: (1) that the shrinkage is in the cell wall, and therefore (2) that the thick-walled cells shrink more than thin-walled cells and (3) that the cells do not shrink much, if any, lengthwise.

(1) The shrinkage of wood takes place in the walls of the cells that compose it, that is, the cell walls become thinner, as indicated by the dotted lines in Fig. 35, which is a cross-section of a single cell. The diameter of the whole cell becomes less, and the opening, or lumen, of the cell becomes larger.