INFERIORITY OF PLANTED OAK. 283 



the tree, how long soever it may live, or what size 

 soever it may attain. 



Complaints are every day made of the badness of 

 the oak timber now, as compared with what it was 

 formerly ; and these complaints are well founded. 

 What with dry rots in confined air, and rots in wa- 

 ter, and slow decomposition in the atmosphere, mod- 

 ern oak, which is, generally speaking, planted oak, 

 is absolutely less durable than even some of the in- 

 ferior species of pine, and far inferior to the native 

 pine of the mountains. A piece of heart of oak, 

 chosen by the king's builder for royal purposes, had 

 been seasoned and prepared in the most careful man- 

 ner ; and after that, it had been kept dry in the cen- 

 tre of a trussed beam for more than twenty years. 

 It is not easy to imagine how a more desirable spe- 

 cimen of oak timber could be procured ; and it cer- 

 tainly appeared well. The colour was good, the 

 grain close, and the texture very hard and firm to 

 the tool. Well, a piece of this same oak was let 

 into the ground, in a dry soil, and so situated that no 

 drip fell upon it, or trickled down it ; and it remained 

 between three and four years. Upon its being taken 

 up, all that portion of it which had been in the ground 

 was in the same condition as the alburnum, or sap- 

 wood, of very old oak piles when they are taken out 

 of the water, more like compact clay than timber ; 

 and when dried, it " broke short," and crumbled into 

 powder. In colour it was more like rotten pear-tree 

 than rotten oak, for there was no blackening, and 

 yet the soil contained a great deal of iron, so that 

 the timber must have been deficient both in tannin 

 and gallic acid. 



It was not, as has been said, the sap-wood, but 

 the very best part of the tree, and from inspection 

 of the cross-cut, the tree had not grown with any 

 very extraordinary rapidity. As little was the in- 

 jury done at the " weather line," just by the surface 

 of the earth, where the durability of timber is put to 



