CHAP. cxin. coni'fei{jE. za'rix. 2369 



this important information ; the larch may be perfectly seasoned in three 

 months, with a very moderate heat, and probahly much sooner, as the next 

 circumstance to be noted seems to show. When wood can lose no more 

 weight, we take it for granted it is perfectly seasoned ; and, as this is so 

 soon attained by the larch, there can remain no just apprehensions of its 

 shrinking. 



"4. Larch will not crack, with any degree of heat that can be called tole- 

 rable, when in plank or boards, or when the poles are split as rails. When 

 in bulk (that is not sawn up), the case is not different, provided the bark 

 remains upon it ; but if that he taken off while the wood is green, it cracks 

 considerably, as will be noticed under the seventh head. 



" 5. Larch is much more tough than foreign deal. It splits with great 

 difficulty, and never in any length with the grain. Foreign deal being so 

 exceedingly apt to split, can seldom be used very thin ; but the larch may 

 be used as thin as the sawyers can cut it, without any danger on that head. 



" 6. It has two properties, the first of which the foreign deal does not pos- 

 sess, and the second but in a very inferior degree ; namely, its beautiful colour, 

 and its capability of receiving a degree of polish equal to any wood yet 

 known, and much superior to the finest mahogany. 



" 7. It may be used in situations where the best foreign deal proves of 

 very short duration; namely, as posts for every description of fencing." 



The knotty tops of some larch trees were sawn, in 1800, into scantlings of 

 about I^in. square, for the purpose of staking and tying up plants in Mr. 

 Pontey's nursery. On examining their condition four years afterwards, the 

 whole of them were perfectly sound above ground, the only symptoms of 

 decay appearing on the sappy parts of the wood, that had been in the ground. 

 A larch post, which, in 1800, had been in the ground upwards of 20 years, 

 was perfectly sound above ground, and not decayed under it deeper than the 

 sap wood ; and, where the bark was not removed underground, even the sap 

 wood was uninjured. (For. Prun., ed. 4., p. 83.) 



Matthew is the next British author who writes on the uses of the larch 

 from his own experience; and his work On Naval Timber \s dated 1831. 

 The larch, compared with pines and firs, he says, has the timber much 

 stronger when young, and even when the trunk is under a foot in diameter, 

 than when old and large. Near the top of the tree, the timber is very 

 inferior, and deficient in toughness, to what it is at the root. The wood is 

 finer grained, and has fewer large knots, than that of the Scotch pine. A thin 

 larch board, when dried, is at once strong, tough, durable, and extremely light. 

 It is difficult to split larch even by wedges ; which is owing to the netted 

 structure of the fibres of the wood: whereas the wood of the Scotch pine, 

 as of other pines, is easily split, owing to its reedy structure, the longitudinal 

 fibres running parallel to each other, with comparatively very few transverse 

 ones. Some experiments conducted at Woolwich, which will be hereafter 

 given, show the strength of Highland larch to be to that of the Riga pine 

 as 1000 to 804; and to that of white American pine (P. 5'tr6bus), as 1000 to 

 824. In Scotland, it is universall}' allowed to be stronger than the Scotch 

 pine ; as a proof of which, the sawyers employed to cut it up have one fourth 

 more pay when cutting larch, than when cutting pi-ie. The larch, compared 

 with any other of the Coniferae, Matthew justly obberves, "has comparatively 

 smaller and more numerous branches ; and, consequently, the timber is freer 

 from large knots, and has more equable strength, as well in small spars, as 

 when large and cut into joists and beams ; provided the timber be not too far up 

 the tree." {On Naval Timber, p. 105.) The larch, says Mr. Sang, will arrive at 

 a useful timber size in one half or a third part of the time, in general, which the 

 Scotch fir requires ; and the timber of the larch, at 30 or 40 years old, when 

 placed in soil and climate adapted to the production of perfect timber, is in 

 every respect superior in quahty to that of the fir at 100 years old. {Plant. 

 Kal.) The price of the wood of the larch, in Scotland, at the present time 

 (1837), varies from 2d. to 4f/. per cubic foot more than that of the Scotch pine. 



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