Technics of Forestry. 



No. IV. 

 By J. CHARLES KING. 



{Continued from page 624.) 



The extent of knowledge is not in what we know, but in how we know 

 things. The power of knowledge is in its application. The true use 

 of knowledge is to make it subserve human welfare. Judged by this 

 simple standard, how limited, feeble, and inaccurate are the teachings 

 of almost everything that pertains to forestry in the daily and general 

 press! One of the popular delusions inculcated is that the wood of 

 the poplar will not burn ; another, that oak backing to armour-plates 

 increases the resistance of the plate to the penetration of shot and 

 shell. The Journal of Forestry, by the diffusion of correct information, 

 will do much to eradicate this misteaching. 



Nor do the writers for the general press stand alone. The highest 

 departments of Government display conspicuous examples of ignorance ; 

 even in the Arts and Science Department at South Kensington Museum, 

 where we have aright to expect a better and more correct state of things, 

 there is amongst the specimens of forest tools used by the Malays and 

 Chinese a very heavy thick-backed woodward's bill ; this is labelled a 

 sickle, and as if to prove that the ignorance was not accidental, a " draw- 

 shave " for bellying-out tub-staves is also labelled a sickle. Even their 

 class-books are not free from the taint. One is entitled " Dynamics 

 Theoretical Mechanics," as if dynamics were not practical mechanics, 

 and but a part of mechanics either. I glance, in passing, at these 

 things, and wonder, with the poor ill-taught woodward, where correct 

 teaching is to come from, if these pretentious teachers are at fault 

 in their A B C of technics and science. 



To those writers who have differed from me I am indebted for 

 making me the gainer by their working experience. I am glad to find 

 that our views and experience differ. If I stated only that which was 

 known to them it would render my aim futile. I am sure your readers 

 as well as myself are pleased to note the earnest and explicit state- 

 ments of the writers on forest tools. I may explain, that while admitting 

 that suitable saws are made for felling large trees, old pit-saws are 

 generally used from their being within the means of the woodwards to 

 purchase ; and also, as far as I have seen, they are preferred to the 

 cross-cut saw, which is better suited for cross-cutting logs or timber 

 when fallen, being shorter and handier than the longer pit-saw. 



