NOTES AND QUEIUES. 325 



signed by the Commissioner of Woods and the Deputy Surveyor 

 of Dean Forest." 



The Preservation, Seasoning, and Strengthening 

 OF Timber. 

 Mr W. Powell, in a paper on the above subject read before the 

 British Association at Southport, said that he proposed to show 

 how some kinds of timber, at present valueless, might become 

 exceedingly useful ; how timber used for structural purposes 

 might be so strengthened as to bear a much greater load or strain; 

 how our streets might be cheaply paved with sanitary wood-blocks 

 which would neither absorb surface water nor give out disagree- 

 able effluvia; how the ravages of dry rot might be combated; and 

 how all this might be done simply and at comparatively small 

 cost. Seasoning timber, either by natural or artificial meauf, 

 tended to impair its strength by reducing its specific gravity, and 

 this was especially the case in timber rapidly dried by artificial 

 means. He had found that by boiling timber in a thin saccharine 

 solution until most of the air in the timber was exhausted, and 

 then by leaving the wood in the syrup to cool, a certain amount 

 of the sugar was absorbed by the timber, in some cases so much 

 as to cause the timber to sink. After the wood had become 

 sufficiently saturated, it was put into a drying-stove and the 

 moisture driven ofi" at a fairly high temperature until the wood 

 was thoroughly dry -seasoned, as the term goes, and it was then 

 ready for immediate use. This process difiered from others 

 mainly in the fact that before drying was attempted the inter- 

 stices of the timber were filled in with a viscid, glutinous solution, 

 which took the place of the natural sap and air which the wood 

 has been forced to part with. So, when the moisture was driven 

 off by stoving, the sugar which remained in the wood acted like a 

 strong binder, and held the fibres together, just as cement or 

 mortar bound the stones or bricks in a wall. He was informed 

 by Dr Herman von Schrenk, the head of the Forest Products 

 Branch of the United States Forestry Department, that there 

 were thousands of square miles of land in the States covered with 

 timber which at present was of little or no commercial value ; 

 and the same might also be said of Canada and most other timber- 

 producing countries. These useless trees might aptly be called 

 the weeds of the timber garden. Most of them were too weak, 

 too sappy, too porous, and were so liable to rapid decay as to be 



