284 MODERN OAK: 



the severest test ; for the decay extended, not only 

 to the entire portion of the part that was in the 

 ground, but also to a cross piece, which was nearly 

 two feet below the surface, and which, of course, 

 had no weather line, from which its decay could 

 originate. Some pieces of American white pine, 

 which is considered to be the worst timber of the 

 whole pine tribe, were put down for the purpose of 

 keeping the durable " heart of oak" steady, till the 

 earth should be consolidated about it. When taken 

 up, these were entire and merely wet, while the said 

 heart of oak was completely gone ! 



But that was not the case with oak of former 

 growth; those oak posts and beams, in the earth 

 and out of it, in all sorts of situations with regard to 

 damp, confined air, and all other circumstances 

 which are usually charged as being the causes of rot 

 in the modern oaks. There are old piles drawn out 

 of foundations in the water, where they must have 

 been for upwards of five hundred years ; and though 

 the sap-wood of them is in a state of decomposition, 

 and the heart champs when too suddenly exposed to 

 the drought, yet the heart of those, properly treated, 

 is as sound as when it was put down. In the peat- 

 bogs, and other submerged forests, too, there is 

 abundance of oak ; and if care be taken in the drying 

 of it, that oak is as hard and durable, at the same 

 time that it is as black, as ebony. 



But our modern oak will not last as many years, 

 in some instances not as many months, as the old 

 oak lasted centuries. The specimen upon which 

 the above experiment was made was of chosen oak, 

 picked in the royal forest, and, therefore, presuma- 

 ble to have been the very best that could be pro- 

 cured, and yet, had it not been protected by the pine 

 beam in which it was cased up, the probability is 

 that it would not have lasted any longer in its first 

 situation than it did in its last. To build houses of 

 such oak is mockery, to build ships of it is cruel ; 



