Mr. Gladstone and Tree-Fe!ling. 



Some further experiments took place on Saturday, February 2nd, on the 

 Eoupell Park Estate, close to Tulse Hill station, with Eansome's Patent 

 Steam Tree-feller, which has already been described in these columns. 

 More than ordinary interest attached to the proceedings from the fact 

 of Mr. Gladstone having expressed a desire to Ije present to witness the 

 testing of the invention. In spite of the weather being anything but 

 inviting, the right hon. gentleman, who was accompanied by Mr. W. H. 

 Gladstone, M.P., kept his appointment, and was received very warmly by 

 a considerable gathering of ladies and gentlemen, and with loud cheers 

 from the workmen round about. The tree-feller had been operating l3efore 

 the right hon. gentleman's arrival, a row of oaks and elms which lay on 

 one side of the meadows attesting its capabilities. When Mr. Gladstone 

 reached the scene, the tree-feller was carried by four men to the base of a 

 solid young oak, between two and three feet in diameter. All the fixing 

 it received was a man thrusting a crowbar into the ground behind to steady 

 it ; while a second steadied the saw-blade at the free end with his hands 

 nntil a few strokes gave it a bearing in the trunk of the tree just clear of 

 the ground. The operation of the saw-blade was precisely analogous to 

 that of a carpenter using a ripping saw to cut a sapling close to the ground. 

 In four minutes after steam was turned on the tree fell, and a measure- 

 ment of the section gave a diameter of 3 ft. 1 in. in the widest part, and 

 of 2 ft. 3 in. in the narrowest. Mr. Gladstone watched the process with a 

 critical eye, and declared that he had been most interested, but that the 

 machine was susceptible of larger application in other countries than in 

 this, Scotland even oifering a better field for its operations than England. 

 On being asked by a bystander how long such a tree would take an expert 

 woodcutter to fell, the right hon. gentleman said he thought it would be 

 very nearly a day's work ; but on this point he consulted his son, who 

 seems to have inherited the paternal taste for felling timber. The hon. 

 member for Whitby did not think it was quite a day's work. Then the 

 right hon. gentleman explained to a httle circle of interested auditors, in 

 response to queries, or by way of comparing notes with one or two experts 

 amongst them, that from the severity of the labour six hours' continual 

 wood chopping was a very good day's work. There would be great economy 

 of timber from the use of the machine, as it cut close to the ground ; 

 whereas a man must have a " face " of at least a foot. His own experience 

 was that oak, though very hard, was not a bad tree to cut, for the grain 

 broke off easily, and did not cling to the axe. Beech was far tougher, that 

 and ash being the two most difl&cult to fell of our English trees, on account 



