[Vor. 5 
112 ANNALS OF THE MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN 
inch piece was soaked in water for a period of nine weeks. 
Another specimen 6 inches in length was cut into two sets 
of four smaller test pieces approximately 14X14X3 inches. 
One of these sets of smaller test specimens, comprising an 
entire cross-section of the original piece, was stored in wet 
shavings for a period of nine weeks. The other set was 
allowed to come to as uniform a moisture content as possible 
when stored in ordinary outside air, these being later re- 
ferred to as air-dry specimens. 
All specimens were tested by compression pressure end- 
wise, the load being applied in a direction parallel to the grain 
of the wood. The maximum crushing load was obtained in 
each case and is given in table r. The moisture content of all 
specimens was obtained by drying to a constant weight at . 
approximately 210° F. 
In the small wet blocks the moisture had thoroughly per- 
meated the wood fiber, and the strength was more nearly co- 
incident with the intrinsic strength of the timber as would 
have been given by tests of the specimens in a green condi- 
tion. It also seems that the tests of the wet blocks are more 
indicative of the intrinsic strength of the wood, inasmuch as 
the air-dry pieces have non-uniform moisture distribution 
under the same atmospheric conditions. This condition would 
apply also to the absorption of water, except that the time 
of absorption was long enough to bring all of the pieces to 
a moisture content well above the fiber-saturation point (as 
shown by the percentage of moisture given in the table), in 
which case the tests should show the relative intrinsic strength 
without regard to the varying per cents of moisture as given. 
Table 1 gives the results of both the decay and strength 
tests. The average percentage loss in weight due to decay 
was made on the number of heart-wood culture blocks from 
each sample. There was not enough sap-wood in the samples 
to be of use in drawing conclusions, thus the results reported 
here are based on heart-wood alone. However, in previous 
work! it has been shown that sap-wood decays irrespective 
1 Zeller, S. M. Loc. cit. 
