Some Observations on the Mode of Measuring 



Timber. 



Bv J. W. BARRY, OF FYLIXGDALES, WHITBY. 



The following remarks are intended cliiefly to be by way of sugges- 

 tion. On taking up the subject of the measurement and valuation 

 of timber, I was greatly struck witli the extreme roughness of the 

 method of mensuration now in use. I was astonished to find that the 

 measurement of a large amount of timber on the principle still in 

 vogue presents a considerable deviation from the ordinary mathematical 

 calculations ; and I was tempted to wonder how it has happened, in 

 these days of reform and demanding an account of everything, that 

 landed proprietors and sellers of timber should be content with a 

 method which, on paper at any rate, deprives them of a certain per- 

 centage of their property. 



The facts cannot be new to the readers of this Journal; and I merely 

 invite an answer to my question, " How is it, with these facts before 

 them, that the present system of mensuration has prevailed with dealers 

 in timber 1" The existence of a thing is, as a rule, a presumption in its 

 favour ; and I should therefore like to know whether or no the sim- 

 plicity of estimating the contents of a tree by the quarter-girth principle 

 is an ample compensation for its inaccuracy ? 



To begin at the beginning, the contents of a solid figure are, as 

 we all very well know, ascertained by multiplying together (to use a 

 useful though I believe an incorrect expression) the length, and the 

 breadth, and the depth. Or we may take any two of these 

 together, as forming the area of a side or an end, and may say, for 

 example, of a block of wood that the contents are found by multiply- 

 ing the area of one end by the length. If the block of wood has a 

 square or a rectangular end, the calculation of its area is easy 

 enough ; but if, as is always the case in nature, the end is circular, 

 or of some form approaching the circle, it then becomes a -very dif- 

 ferent and a very difficult matter to calculate the area in question. 

 The exact estimate, indeed, of the area of a circle is, as we all know, one 

 of the unsolved and doubtless insoluble problems of mathematics. 

 The attempt to fi.nd an answer has driven learned men into idiocy, and 

 until some inhabitant comes down to enlighten us from some of those 

 spheres where absolute knowledge exists, it is likely to be a question 



