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Fig. 9. Cross-section of Basswood (Magnified). v, vessels; mr, pith rays.

If a well-smoothed thin disk or cross-section of oak (say one-sixteenth inch thick) is held up to the light, it looks very much like a sieve, the pores or vessels appearing as clean-cut holes. The spring-wood and gray patches are seen to be quite porous, but the firm bodies of fibres between them are dense and opaque. Examined with a magnifier it will be noticed that there is no such regularity of arrangement in straight rows as is conspicuous in pine. On the contrary, great irregularity prevails. At the same time, while the pores are as large as pin holes, the cells of the denser wood, unlike those of pine wood, are too small to be distinguished. Studied with the microscope, each vessel is found to be a vertical row of a great number of short, wide tubes, joined end to end (see Fig. 8, c). The porous spring-wood and radial gray tracts are partly composed of smaller vessels, but chiefly of tracheids, like those of pine, and of shorter cells, the "wood parenchyma," resembling the cells of the medullary rays. These latter, as well as the fine concentric lines mentioned as occurring in the summer-wood, are composed entirely of short tube-like parenchyma cells, with square or oblique ends (see Fig. 8, a and b). The wood fibres proper, which form the dark, firm bodies referred to, are very fine, thread-like cells, one twenty-fifth to one-tenth inch long, with a wall commonly so thick that scarcely any empty internal space or lumen remains (see Figs. 8, e, and 7, B). If, instead of oak, a piece of poplar or basswood (see Fig. 9) had been used in this study, the structure would have been found to be quite different. The same kinds of cell-elements, vessels, etc., are, to be sure, present, but their combination and arrangement are different, and thus from the great variety of possible combinations results the great variety of structure and, in consequence, of the qualities which distinguish the wood of broad-leaved trees. The sharp distinction of sap wood and heartwood is wanting; the rings are not so clearly defined; the vessels of the wood are small, very numerous, and rather evenly scattered through the wood of the annual rings, so that the distinction of the ring almost vanishes and the medullary or pith rays in poplar can be seen, without being magnified, only on the radial section.