be December, and unanimously pronounce that if tben felled, it will neither shrink, warp, nor cleave, nor 

 decay in many years ". " If you fell not oak (says EveljTi) tOl the sap is in rest, as it is commonly about 

 November and December, after the frost has well nipped them, the very saphngs thus cut, wiU continue 

 without decay, as long as the heart of the tree. And the reason of this is briefly given by Vitruvius, because 

 the winter air closes the pores, and so consequently consolidates the trees ; by wliich means the oak, as he 

 and PUny both express it, will acquire a sort of eternity in its duration ; and much more so if it be barked 

 in the spring, and left standing all the summer, exposed to the sun and wind, as is usual in Staffordshire 

 and the adjacent counties (1690); by which we find by long experience, the trunks of the trees so dried and 

 hardened, that the sappy part in a manner, becomes as firm and durable as the heart itself". — Plot, in 

 P/iiL Trans, vol. xvii. 7). 455. 



Tlie custom of felling wood in winter prevailed in England from the most ancient times, but the high 

 price of tanners' bark introduced the custom of cutting down the trees in spring, thereby gaining the bark 

 of the branches as well as of the butt, and saving some trifling expence in disbarking, which is more trouble 

 when the tree is standing. Buffon advises that trees required for timber, should first be stripped of their 

 bark, and left to die standing, the sappy part by this means becoming as hard as the interior, without 

 cracking, warping, or decaying.^ 



" It is the sap in the wood ", says M. Necker, quoted by Bowden " which is the cause of its destruc- 

 tion ; it heats, corrupts, reduces it to dust, and rots it before its time." - 



In the year 1815, Mr. Bowden drew up a report to the government, on Dry-rot, and in corroboration 

 that the sap, remaining in the wood, is the cause of the decay, gives much valuable information, and facts, 

 as to the duration of various sliips. 



The 'Sovereign of the Seas', constructed for Charles I., was two years in building 1636-7, of wood 

 cut in winter, having been barked the spring previous. After forty-seven years service, and figuring in 

 several engagements, she was broken up, but a great part of the wood was so sound, as to be employed in 

 building a second ship of the same name. The ' Eoyal William', 100 guns, built of wood barked in spring, 

 and cut the next winter, was tlu-ee years on the stocks, and was finished in 1719; after much hard work she 

 was finally broken up in 1813, having lasted ninety-four years. 



The "Achilles", a sixty-gun ship, built in 1757, in the short period of one year and two months (by Mr. 

 Barnard of Deptford by contract, p. 137.) of timber barked in the spring while standing, and cut down in 

 the following winter, after being in active service nearly six years, employed as a guard-ship about seven years, 

 continuing in the West Indies (so destructive to ships) about two years, and lying up in ordinary tlikteen 

 years, making altogether a period of twenty-seven years and a half without being once repaired, is found on 

 being taken to pieces, as sound as the first day she was launched p. 138,-39-40. Any doubts that may 

 have been raised as to the partial repairs of the two before-mentioned ships, invalidating their claim to dma- 

 bility cannot apply to the ' AchiUes ', in which not a single timber had been replaced. 



In the Eoyal Dockyards at that time there was an allowance to the providers of wood of this kind, to 

 indemnify them for the loss of the bark ; but that article rose so much in value, as to render the per 



' " The supposed superior quaUty of the wood when winter-felled, and the general practice of felling oak timber 

 at that season, may be inferred from a statute of James 1st. whereby it is enacted, that no persons shall fell, or cause 

 to be felled, any oaken trees meet to be barked, when bark is worth two shillings a cart-load (timber for the needful 

 building and reparation of houses, ships, or mills, only excepted) but between the 1st. day of AprU, and the last 

 day of June ; not even for the King's use, out of barking time, except for building or repahing his Majesty's houses 

 or ships". — Siipp. Erie. Brit. 



2 Neither M. Necker nor Mr. Bowden are to be considered as authority with regard to the natural history of 

 Dry-Eot ; but this does not affect the argimient as to the sap lel't in the wood being its immediate cause ; the mode 

 in which the Fungus is germinated, is a question of botanical physiology for separate consideration. 



