The northern sugar maple is another tree which is a favorite in all sections where it is grown.  This tree yields a hard wood that is the best and toughest timber grown in some localities.  The trees grow to heights of 75 to 100 feet and attain girths of 5 to 9 feet.  Maple lumber is stout and heavy.  It makes fine flooring and is used in skating rinks and for bowling alleys.  Many pianos are made of maple.  Wooden dishes and rolling pins are usually made from maple wood.  During the spring of the year when the sap is flowing, the average mature maple tree will yield from fifteen to twenty gallons of sap in a period of three to four weeks.  This sap is afterwards boiled down to maple syrup and sugar.

Hemlock trees, despite the fact that they rank among the most beautiful trees of the forest, produce lumber which is suitable only for rough building operations.  The wood is brown and soft and will not last long when exposed to the weather.  It cracks and splits easily because it is so brittle.  Hemlock is now of considerable importance as pulpwood for making paper.  For many years, a material important for tanning leather has been extracted in large amounts from the bark of hemlock trees.

One of the most pleasing uses to which the balsam fir is put is as Christmas trees.  Sometimes it is used in making paper pulp.  The balsam fir seldom grows higher than 50 feet or thicker than 12 inches.  The leaves of this tree have a very sweet odor and are in demand at Christmas time.  Foresters and woodsmen often use balsam boughs to make their beds and pillows when camping in the woods.

[Illustration:  Pine which yields turpentine and timber]

Our native supplies of hardwoods and softwoods are used for general building purposes, for farm repairs, for railroad ties, in the furniture and veneer industry, in the handle industry, and in the vehicle and agricultural implement industries.  On the average each American farmer uses about 2,000 board feet of lumber each year.  New farm building decreased in the several years following the World War, due to the high price of lumber and labor.  As a result of this lack of necessary building, millions of dollars worth of farm machinery stood out in the weather.  Livestock lacked stables in some sections.  Very little building was done in that period in two hundred and fifty prosperous agricultural counties in thirty-two different states.

The railroads consume about 15 per cent. of our total lumber cut.  They use between 100,000,000 and 125,000,000 railroad ties a year.  It used to be that most of the cross-ties were of white oak cut close to the places where they were used.  Now Douglas fir, southern pine and other woods are being used largely throughout the Middle Western and Eastern States.  The supply of white oak ties is small and the prices are high.  Some years ago, when white oak was abundant, the railroads that now are using other cross-ties would not have even considered such material for use in their roadbeds.  The fact that other ties are now being used emphasizes the fact that we are short on oak timber in the sections where this hardwood formerly was common.