76 Mr. Gilbert Burnett on the Decay 



be, rapidly decay. But this general principle has been too 

 universally, far too empirically pursued, and oaken timber 

 has been contracted for merely as oak, and used merely be- 

 cause it is called oak, in docks, wharfs, ships, campshoding, 

 &c. &c., without due reference being had to the kind of oak, 

 its maturity, seasoning, &c. ; and hence the astonishing facts 

 that some ships have lasted upwards of a century, while others 

 have been worthless even before they have been fully built ; 

 that dock and flood-gates, posts, &c. &c., are often found to 

 be rotten and useless in ten or fifteen years, while others last 

 sound and strong for ages. These matters have not unfre- 

 quently excited the attention of the public, and have occa- 

 sionally been discussed in the highest assemblies of the state. 



Many causes have been assigned for this premature decay 

 (for premature it must surely be esteemed) ; as, when we know 

 that vessels, built in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and early part 

 of the eighteenth century, lasted from fifty to a hundred years, 

 no absolute necessity can exist for those of the nineteenth being 

 often utterly worthless in a fifth— aye, in less than a twentieth 

 part of the forementioned time. 



From the facts elicited by the investigations which have hence 

 been instituted, the most probable causes of decay, in our 

 modern oaken structures, may fairly be attributed to the use of 

 immature^ ill-chosen, and worse-seasoned wood. The inordinate 

 supply which, during the last war, was demanded by our dock- 

 yards, led to the introduction not only of inferior foreign timber, 

 but also to the premature and almost indiscriminate appli- 

 cation of our own ; whence resulted that lamentable decay, 

 [destruction ?] to cure and to account for which so much has 

 been written, said, and done. Essays have . been published 

 upon the felling, the seasoning, and the choice of wood ; trea- 

 tises have appeared on rot, i. e., upon ordinary decay; and 

 volumes have abounded on that appalling scourge, misnamed 

 the dry-rot: the which, if they have not greatly explicated the 

 problem, have at least gone far to shew that much, very much, 

 may be written on a subject, about which little, very little, is 

 truly known. 



Perhaps the authority of Linnaeus, who arranged all the 

 British oaks as but varieties of one and the same species, 

 which he called Quercus Jlobur, not a little favoured the 



