Certain parts of it can be converted into small stoppers. In the country where it is produced, it is used for making water conduits, beehives and shelves on which to preserve objects from dampness. Mixed with a mortar of clay, the Kabyles use it for the walls of their dwellings, and also, in lieu of tiles, as a roofing material for their primitive habitations. It is used also by fishermen as floats for their nets. These various applications were known to the Greeks and Romans, as shown by the works of Theophrastus and Pliny. The latter says of the cork-oak: “Nothing is utilized but its bark, which is very thick, and which is renewed in measure as it is removed. This bark is often used for the buoys of anchors and ships and of fishermen’s nets, for the bungs of casks, and for women’s winter foot gear. The Greeks called the cork-oak the ‘bark tree’.... Cork bark is used as a covering for roofs.” (“Hist. Nat.,” xvi, 18.) As for the chips, they can be used as an isolating material to prevent freezing. Reduced to fragments, they furnish an excellent material for covering circus rings. Let us return to “female” cork, which is much better adapted for being worked, and the grain of which is much more homogeneous. In this form cork bark constitutes a very bad conductor of heat and sound, and renders valuable services in the industries as a material for preventing the cooling of steam pipes and generators, and preventing the melting of ice in ice houses, or the heating of apparatus for producing cold. It is the basis of a certain number of cements, and coatings for preventing the escape of heat, which are applied to pipes, steam domes, hot water reservoirs, etc., and upon the composition of which we shall not dwell here. As for jacketing with cork alone; the first method consists in placing narrow strips of cork, whose edges touch each other, along steam pipes and cylinders, and fastening them by means of wire. A pipe thus jacketed is tangent internally to all these strips, and a section of the whole shows a circle inscribed in a polygon. In the second system thin strips of cork, fastened to canvas with India rubber cement, are wound around the pipe spirally. Finally, a third method of jacketing consists in the use of two half cylinders that exactly fit the exterior of the steam pipe. These cylinders, which can be made of any desired length, are made of powdered cork and starch, and are covered with a spirally wound strip of calico, which may be coated with tar or any suitable kind of paint. Each of these systems permits of obtaining a great saving in fuel. As cork is likewise a very bad conductor of sound, it is successfully used on the doors of consulting rooms, and for making floors for hospitals, etc. Finally, in the manufacture of certain stringed instruments, it is used to prevent a loss of sound.