Boulger's statement as to its freedom from insect attack, yet the furniture which I have had made from three of the trees in question is distinctly superior to that of common walnut, and as good as imported black walnut, in colour; and when properly seasoned, for which three or four years should be allowed, as good cabinetmaker's wood as the best Circassian or Italian walnut: and Unwin,[1] quoting Nordlinger and Mayr, says that the timber of trees grown in Germany has the same specific gravity and the same beautifully coloured heartwood as in America. I am informed by experienced cabinetmakers and timber merchants that the colour and quality of the wood now imported is, either on account of its being younger or grown in different localities, inferior to what it used to be when first introduced to this market, and Mr. A. Howard told me that he could not buy American timber of better quality than that of a tree blown down at Albury which was given me by the Duke of Northumberland. It takes a beautiful polish either with oil or French polish, has not warped in the least degree, and has in many cases a beautifully variegated figure. The sapwood is thick and of a paler colour, and should not be used in first-class work any more than that of the common walnut, which is always attacked sooner or later by the larve of a woodboring beetle.
From what I saw of it in America, I believe it to be extremely durable when exposed to the weather, as it lasts long in fences, and large canoes were made from it, whilst it was the favourite wood for furniture until its increasing scarcity and price caused it to be superseded by oak and mahogany.
Old trees often show a beautiful wavy grain, as well as a variety of markings, and from the forks and burrs veneers are cut, which, though of a different colour, are equal in beauty and pattern to mahogany or satinwood.
Cobbett[2] states, though he does not appear to have seen it himself, that there was at New York part of a black walnut trunk, which measured 36 feet round at the base, and had been scooped out and used as a bar-room, and afterwards as a grocer's shop, and that this tree, if it had been sawed into inch boards, would have yielded 50,000 feet, worth at that time $1500, but this seems exaggerated; though Loudon states (p. 1438) that a tree, perhaps the same as the one Cobbett speaks of, and grown on the south side of Lake Erie, was exhibited in London in 1827, which was 12 feet in diameter, hollowed out and furnished as a sitting-room. (H.J.E.)
