TIMBER AND BOARD. 519 



wood and standing, or cut and squared, sometimes seasoned, 

 the measurement of it being an art which required con- 

 siderable skill. This fact is illustrated by the ' Carpenter's 

 Rule,' a treatise on timber measuring by Richard More, 

 published in 1602, and dedicated to the Carpenters' Company. 

 This work contains elaborate geometrical and arithmetical 

 rules for the calculation of the cubic contents of timber, par- 

 ticularly that which is'waynie' or 'canted/ i.e. of irregular 

 shape. More tells us, that such misshapen timber was often 

 sold under the common modes of calculation at a rebate of 

 i s. a load, and that the purchaser for want of experience might 

 often lose to the value of 4?. or 5^. in the load when he began 

 to work up the material. Considerable acuteness was also 

 needed in calculating the value of standing timber, especially 

 if the tree was thick at the base and rapidly decreased in 

 girth with its height, the problem being, how many feet 

 of available board or plank could be got out of the trunk. 



Timber is bought by the load of fifty cubical feet. It 

 seems, though the evidence is not quite conclusive, that the 

 ton and the load were generally identical. In shipping, a ton 

 of timber is taken at forty cubical feet, but tonnage in ships 

 leaves a considerable margin for capacity in loading. As 

 may be expected, there are great variations in the value of 

 the ton or load. In the first place, proximity to forest is of 

 great importance. Timber is much cheaper at Oxford than 

 it is at Cambridge, for not only were the several colleges 

 possessed of considerable woodlands in the neighbourhood, 

 from which they drew supplies of fuel and timber, but the 

 great forests of Shotover and Stow, then in the hands of the 

 Crown, were within easy distance ; and it seems that if building 

 was undertaken, even though the corporation might not get 

 the grant, it could generally procure a licence to cut at a 

 cheap rate. Then the kind of timber was of importance. 

 The beams of roofs and floors were generally of oak and 

 chestnut, the latter perhaps less frequently than is supposed ; 

 for though England was much more wooded three centuries 



