But first a road has to be made for the sledges. A snowy track is cleared of stones, trees and underbrush and is packed hard by the horses and sledges. Then it is flushed with water and let freeze. If it runs down hill and has no turns, it is a sort of " coaster " that makes the work easier for the horses. In the northern woods from Maine to Oregon, the logs are rolled down the banks of streams onto the ice. Then, when the ice breaks up in the spring, the logs go down on the flood to the saw mills. Drivers go with them, riding on the tumbling logs, guiding them with long iron rods, keeping them from piling up and jamming. This is very dangerous work, so log drivers get high wages. They bring the logs over the rapids and dams and down to the saw mills. In our Southern pine woods where there is no snow or frozen rivers, the logs are not moved at all, but the saw mills are set up in the forest, and moved when a section is cut over.

Some of the big red-wood trees of California are thirty feet thick. That's as thick as many a two-story house is high. They have to be sawed into several logs by enormous saws and then split with dynamite so they can be handled at all. Mahogany trees of Cuba and the hot countries of America often grow on mountains sides a hundred miles in the country. They are very heavy, hardwood trees, often one hundred feet high, yet entire logs are got down to seaports, just by men and oxen, working with clumsy tools and solid-wheel trucks. Rosewood is brought out of the hot jungle along the Amazon River in South America. It is cut into ten foot logs, split, built into rafts and floated to the seaports. Teak logs are dragged out of East Indian forests by elephants. In nearly every country of the world are timber woods so valuable and beautiful that they are got to market at the greatest labor and expense.

When any tree is first cut it is "green," or full of sap. To be useful for lumber it must be seasoned, or dried. Sometimes, and with some kinds, as with teak, the tree is girdled by cutting a belt all around it and allowing it to die standing. A log is never allowed to lie on moist ground by good lumbermen, for then it would be attacked by insects and fungi, or toad-stool-like growths, and would quickly begin to decay. In our country logs are usually hurried to a saw mill and squared. That is, the bark is sawed away on four sides. Oaks are often quartered, that is, cut across the middle both ways, making four logs. These logs are then piled up in lumber yards for open air drying, or they are sawed into planks and then seasoned.

Two kinds of saws are used in saw mills—the circular and the gang saw. The circular saw is a big toothed steel plate that revolves, cutting through a log as it turns. The gang saw is made up of a number of blade saws set in a frame like the blades of a safety razor. The " gang " goes through a log and cuts it into planks in one journey. The barrel saw used in cooper shops earns its name twice. It is shaped like a barrel stave and is used for cutting the curved staves of barrels, kegs, hogsheads and water pails. The band saw of furniture factories is really a flexible band or belt of steel, that turns over pulleys like a leather belt. It is used for scroll sawing, in making such things as the open-work music racks on pianos.

And now, here is something very odd about saws. When men first began to make saws they set flint stone teeth into wooden blades. When they learned to make bronze, saw blades were cast or molded with toothed edges. Steel saws had the teeth cut on the blades. But it was discovered that the teeth wore and were sharpened away very fast, so the saw became constantly smaller and, by and by, useless, although the blade was perfectly good. Steel was made harder and harder, but still saw-teeth broke and wore away, in having to go buzz-zipping through hardwood logs. Then saw makers went back to the old, old idea of false teeth for saws. The teeth are made separately and set into the blade. When a tooth breaks or wears out a new one goes in. Doesn't it seem strange that our latest saw goes back, for its new idea, to the flint-toothed wooden blade of primitive people?

Have you ever seen a lumber yard? The planks are piled up in tall stacks, but every plank is separated from every other one by a cross-piece. This is to allow the air to get to every surface to season the wood. Often shed roofs are built over piles of lumber to protect them from sun and rain that would warp and rot them. Wood is made stronger and more durable by seasoning. If not well dried, wood splits and warps after it is made up into furniture and house fittings. Slow drying in cool air is the best seasoning of all. After air seasoning, many fine cabinet woods, like mahogany, are sawed into boards a quarter of an inch thick or less for veneering, and then kiln-dried, or baked, in warm-air ovens.

Great pains is taken to kill all insect life in wood. Ship timbers are soaked in brine. Some woods are steamed and dried. Some have the bark charred with a gas jet. Shingles are soaked in creosote to make them damp proof. Exposed wood is painted with lead paints or tars. Fine furniture woods and floors have their pores filled with resins, and are then steamed and varnished to protect the surfaces and to bring out the beauty of the grains.

How many woods do you know after they are made up into useful articles? Nearly all of them are stained, even the finest of the hardwoods. In furniture we like darker colors than are natural in the woods. Oak is yellow, from almost white to an ochre, but we stain it all shades of brown. Mahogany is a light red that darkens with age, so we stain it a dark red. Birch, a yellow wood, stains to a good imitation of mahogany. Pine and ash take any stain, even the art colors of forest green and russet brown. Teak is a brown wood that the Chinese wood-carvers stain an ebony black, then carve and inlay with mother of pearl. The walnuts are stained soft, dark browns. White mahogany and bird-eye maple are two woods that are more beautiful unstained. But, as a rule, stains in acting unevenly, bring out the grains, the rays and curls in wood in greater beauty than if they are left in the natural colors. (See Forestry, Forest-Reserves, Lumbering.)