62 2 1 he Journal of Forestry. 



tired worker before the day's work is half got through, and work so 

 badly done, that for some special forest work, as felling trees 

 bnnglingly, its evil effects may be noted here and there in forests 

 half a century afterwards, by the ruined " stubs," with but half- 

 developed timber of sickly growth, or of other trees standing nigh 

 with limbs torn off, that stood out of the way of the falling timber, 

 only that bungling work made it fall on to them. 



When I shall be able to place before your readers illustrations of 

 the diversity of axes in use for various purposes of wood-craft, of 

 which I have by working experience tested the relative values, it will 

 surprise those who think any tool will do to use if it will chop wood, 

 to learn that a woodward's heavy axe is of no use to the shipwright, 

 that the coachmaker would not use a wheelwright's or carpenter's axe, 

 though working in the same shop, and that the cooper uses an axe 

 that all would look upon as worthless, and the lath-render's chopper 

 would not be recognised as such by any other of these workers : yet 

 each is so fitting for its special purpose. 



Fig 5. 



In reverting to the consideration of the first form of axes in use — 

 the axes of stone — we notice the same diversity ; this matter has not 

 had the attention the subject deserves, from the fact that the writers 

 upon pre-historic tools are chiefly only book-makers or dilettanti. To 

 the workman, the form of the tool would indicate the work done with 

 it. The same technical ignorance pervades the illustrations of our 

 histories and encyclopedias, more especially Biblical illustrations 

 where I have seen pictures of a workman's axe resembling a crescent- 

 shaped cheese-knife with an elegantly turned handle, like a bedpost 

 or table-leg. 



In the oldest axes known, made out of flint — a mere wedge of 

 stone — ground to chisel edge, we note the absence of any hole or eye 

 for a handle ; we at once know that the handle must have encom- 

 passed the axe-head, the same as a smith's hazel-rod does his chisel, 

 somewhat like the sketch Fig 5. The stone axe-heads are nearly always 

 rounded off at the edges, to admit of a split sapling or shoot being 

 doubled round it and lashed together along the handle, additional 



