Such figures as maple has are brought out best in tangential sawing--that is, cut like a slab off the side of the log. Three distinct figures are recognized in sugar maple, and to some extent they belong to other maples. These forms of wood are known as birdseye, curly, and blister maple. They are accidental forms and exist in certain trees only. Students of wood structure are not wholly agreed as to the cause of these forms, but one of them, the birdseye effect, is believed to be due to adventitious buds which distort the wood in their vicinity. These buds start near the center of the tree when it is small, but never succeed in forcing their way out. They remain just beneath the bark during most or the whole of the tree’s life. A pin-like core, resembling a fine thread, connects the birdseye with the tree’s pith. This thread is the pith of the embryonic branch formed by the bud which never breaks through the bark. When the wood is sawed tangentially, small, dark-brown points or dots show the center of the buds, or the pith line connecting it with the tree’s center. Curly maple and blister maple are not believed to be formed in the same way as birdseye. The uses of sugar maple are nearly universal, where a hard, white wood is wanted. Many large trees contain little colored heart, and trees are generally fifty years old before they have any. More maple is worked into flooring than into any other one commodity. Mills in Michigan alone, in 1910, made 185,611,662 feet of maple flooring. It was shipped to practically every civilized country in the world. Many builders consider it the best wooden floor that can be laid. In a test made in a large store in Philadelphia some years ago, a marble floor wore through sooner than maple, when the same wear was on both. Nearly all kinds and classes of furniture have places for maple, either as outside material or inside frames, drawer bottoms, or partitions. Vehicle manufacturers employ it for heavy axles, running gear, parts of automobiles, sleigh runners and frames, and hand sleds. It is made into handles from gimlet sizes to cant hooks. Gymnasium apparatus owes much to the whiteness, smoothness, and strength of maple. Woodenware from toothpicks to ironing boards; from butcher blocks to butter molds; from door knobs to die blocks, is dependent on maple for some of its best material. It is largely used for boxes, in both solid and veneer form. Only two woods are now employed in larger amounts for veneers in the United States than maple. They are red gum and yellow pine. Maple is one of the three woods most largely employed in hardwood distillation in this country; beech and birch are the others. Maple sugar is a product of this tree almost exclusively, and the business is large. In some parts of New England it is claimed that a grove is worth more for sugar than the land is worth for agriculture.