The outer walls are usually covered with clapboards of pine, spruce, or, sometimes, basswood; in this locality, usually pine, and this is the best. These boards are made from six-inch strips, one inch thick as they come from the mills; after being allowed to dry they are planed both sides, and jointed, and run through a re-sawing machine, making two clapboards out of each inch piece. Clapboards should not be laid to exceed four and one-half inches to the weather, and nailed once in twelve inches. In many parts of the Eastern States, particularly Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire, large quantities of spruce clapboards are made from small, straight trees which are cut in four and six-foot lengths, turned in a lathe and then sawed toward the center, the thin edges in, and thick edges out. These make a very good clapboard, but great care must be used in putting them on, owing to their liability to split. Some painters claim that on these boards paint will not stick as well; still, in our experience, where dry clapboards have been painted with pure white lead and linseed oil, it has not come off.

Basswood is vised in only a few localities where the wood is plenty; if put on dry, and thoroughly nailed and painted without getting wet, it makes a very good covering. Clapboards are undoubtedly the best covering for outside walls of wood buildings. Boards ten inches wide, running perpendicularly and battened at the joints, make a good outside covering.

Now-a-days we sometimes venture upon the grounds of our ancestors by shingling outer walls, but usually for effect only, in gables, where a few shingles laid in a panel or above a belt course, cut in some attractive pattern and painted in some rich or warm color, have a pleasing effect. The great disadvantages in the protection of exposed surfaces of wooden buildings, render the material less desirable for certain classes of residences, and there is not the least doubt that less perishable materials are preferable, other things being equal.