348 DEMAND FOR LUMBER. 



I have spoken of the foreign demand for American agricultura. 

 products as having occasioned an extension of cultivated ground, 

 which had led to cleai'ing land not requii-ed by the necessities of 

 home consumption. But the forest itself has become, so to speak, 

 an article of exportation. England, as we have seen, imported 

 oak and pine from the Baltic ports more than six hundred years 

 ago. She has since drawn largely on the forests of Norway, and 



tlie wood while green, by soaking, by forcing-pumps, or, most economically, 

 by the simple pressure of a column of the fluid in a small pipe connected with 

 the end of the piece of timber subjected to the treatment. Clave {Etudes For- 

 estieres, pp. 240-349) gives an interesting account of the various processes em- 

 ployed for rendering wood imperishable, and states that railroad-ties injected 

 with sulphate of copper in 1846, were found absolutely unaltered in 1855 ; and 

 telegraphic posts prepared two years earlier, are now in a state of perfect preser- 

 vation. 



For many piu*pose3 the method of injection is too expensive, and some sim- 

 pler process is much to be desired. The question of the proper time of felling 

 timber is not settled, and the best modes of air, water and steam seasoning are 

 not yet fully ascertained. Experiments on th£se subjects, would be well worth 

 the patronage of Governments in new countries, where they can be very easily 

 made without the necessity of much waste of valuable material, and vdthout 

 expensive arrangements for observation. 



The practice of stripping living trees of their bark some years before they 

 are felled, is as old as the time of Vitruvius, but is much less followed than 

 it deserves, partly because the timber of trees so treated inclines to crack and 

 split, and partly because it becomes so hard as to be wrought with consider- 

 able difiiculty. 



In America, economy in the consumption of fuel has been much promoted 

 by the substitution of coal for wood, the general use of stoves both for wood 

 and coal, and recently by the employment of anthracite in the furnaces of 

 stationary and locomotive steam-engines. All the objections to the use of an- 

 thracite for this latter purpose appear to have been overcome, and the improve- 

 ments in its combustion have been attended with a great pecuniary saving, and 

 with much advantage to the preservation of the woods. 



The employment of coal has produced a great reduction in the consumption 

 of firewood in Paris. In 1815, the supply of firewood for the city required 

 1,200,000 steres, or cubic metres ; in 1859 it had fallen to 501,805, while, in 

 the meantime, the consumption of coal had risen from 600,000 to 4,320,000 

 metrical quintals. See Clave, Etudes, p. 212. 



In 1869 Paris consumed 951,157 steres of firewood, 4,902,414 hectolitres, or 

 more than 13,000,000 bushels, of charcoal, and 6,872,000 metrical quintals, or 

 more than 7,000,000 tons, of mineral coal. — Annuaire de la Bevue des Eaux ei 

 ForSts for 1872, p. 26. 



The increase in the price of firewood at Paris, within a century, has been 

 comparatively small, while that of timber and of sawed lumber has increased 

 enormously. 



