Excerpt from The American Woods, Vol. 1: Exhibited by Actual Specimens and With Copious Explanatory Text

The necessity of more generally diffused information concerning the variety and importance of our forest trees is justification enough for the appearance of this work, especially at this day, when the demands of Forestry in this country are constantly more and more keenly felr. The work was undertaken at the suggestion of my father, whose intense interest in Forestry, and a kindred taste, at once gave me inspiration to the work. It was entered upon with the expectation of his valuable companionship and counsel during its progress, but, alas! that I was destined to have only at the outset, and, while I was then left ever to mourn the loss of a kind father, companion and teacher, the reader must fail to find in these pages that value and finish which his mind would have given them.

Among the happiest pictures of my memory are those in which I see my father's delight, as I would show to him, from time to time, my successful progress in devising a way of making the sections for this work, and if only for the happiness which its appearance would have caused him, could he have lived until this day, I have felt duty-bound to go on with it, even though left to do it alone.

The work is the outgrowth of one, of somewhat similar plan, proposed by my father some years since, but which he did not carry into effect. Its design is primarily and principally to show, in as compact and perfect a manner as possible, authentic specimens of our American woods, both native and introduced. For that end three sections, respectively transverse, radial and tangential to the grain (see Glossary), are made of each timber, sufficiently thin to allow in a measure the transmission of light, and securely mounted in well made frames.

The three planes above mentioned show the grain from all sides, so to speak, no plane being possible but that would be either one of them or a combination of them. The difficulty, however, of cutting a great number of sections exactly on those planes is obvious, so let it be understood that the terms, "transverse, " "radial" and "tangential, " are, in many cases, only approximately exact in their application.

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