Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 291, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 December 1915 — Wood and Water. [ARTICLE]

Wood and Water.

All wood contains more or lees va ter; even the driest wood known con tains two or three pounds of water te every hundred pounds of weight. Absolutely dry wood is unknown, toe the heat needed to obtain it would die solve the wood and convert it into gas and charcoal. An eminent Swiss authority on the characteristics of wood believes that a sufficiently powerful and perfect microscope, could it bo made, would show that the ultimate wood cell Is composed of crystals like grains of sugar or salt, and that thin films of water hold the crystals apart, yet bind them into a mass. A good microscope shows the wood cell and reveals its spiral bandages and its openings and cavities, but no Instrument yet made reveals the ultimate crystals that, as many believe, do exist, and that would explain why water cannot be expelled from wood without destroying the wood Its* If. Youth’ll Companion.