[22] Most of these interesting details are found in Boulger's valuable treatise on "Wood." Perhaps the most valuable woods are Box, which is used for woodcuts, and Walnut, which used to be highly prized for gun-stocks, as much as £600 having been paid for a single tree. But the most interesting histories of trade in timber belong to the commoner and more usual woods. The great woods of Jarrah (_Eucalyptus marginata_) cover 14,000 square miles of Australia, but they are being rapidly cut down and sawn up into small blocks to be carried right across the world in order to form the pavement which London cabmen and cab-horses prefer to any other. One remembers also the beautiful Deodar forests of Afghanistan, and the Himalayas. Logs of deodar were floated down the rivers to form bridges or temple pillars in Srinagar, the capital of far Cashmere. Nowadays great "slides" are made, winding down into the valleys from the recesses of the hills. When winter approaches, water is sprinkled on the logs which make the slide; this freezes and forms a slippery descending surface, down which the deodar timber rushes till it reaches the low ground, where it is cut up into railway sleepers and takes part in the civilizing of India. The fragrant Teak has an oleoresin which prevents the destructive white ants from attacking it; it is the most valuable timber for shipbuilding, and grows in many places of India, Malaysia, Java, and Sumatra. It floats down the rivers of Burmah, coming from the most remote hill jungles, and elephants are commonly used at the ports to gather the trunks from the water and pile them ready for shipment. The Birch is carried all the way from Russia to Assam and Ceylon, in order to make the chests in which tea is sent to England and Russia (native Indian woods are also used). It is also used in the distillation of Scotch whisky, for smoking herrings and hams, for clogs, baskets, tanning, dyeing, cordage, and even for making bread. But one of the most curious and interesting sights in any seaport is sure to be an old white Norwegian or Swedish sailing barque or brigantine. She will have a battered, storm-beaten appearance, and is yet obviously a comfortable home. The windows of the deck-house may be picked out with a lurid green. The tall, slowmoving, white-bearded skipper and his wife, children, and crew, not to speak of a dog and cats, have their home on this veteran "windjammer." She carries them from some unpronounceable, never-heard-of port in Norway, all over the world. You may see her discharging a cargo of deal plank, through the clumsy square holes in her stern, in a forgotten Fifeshire village, in Madagascar, in China, or in the Straits of Magellan. All her life she is engaged in this work, and her life is an exceedingly long one, to judge from the Viking lines on which she is built.