284 TIMBER 



owing to decay, but solely because of the abrasion by rails 

 or chairs caused by traffic. 



That there are failures in creosoting is certain. The 

 author has seen a creosoted plank taken out of the ground 

 in as bad a condition as an adjoining uncreosoted one after 

 only a few years' exposure, but this is rare, and on the other 

 hand he has cuttings from the Memel timber of the old 

 East Pier at Blyth, Northumberland, which has stood the 

 wash of the sea and the attacks of the sea worm and 

 weather for forty-seven years ; the creosote smells as strong 

 as on the day it was injected and still stains the paper 

 on which the wood is placed. 



Doubtless one of the reasons of failure in creosoting is 

 because the timber treated has not been sufficiently dried. 

 Particular care should be taken that logs and planking, 

 more particularly the latter, should be properly separated 

 by laths when in the creosoting tanks, so that the creosote 

 has a proper chance of being injected equally over the 

 surface. 



Creosote no doubt, like the salts of metals, tends by 

 exposure to weather and salt water to leach out of the tim- 

 ber this may be noticed in telegraph poles during hot 

 weather but, as may be judged from the examples given 

 above, it is a very slow process. Cut timber in the same 

 situation as piling, and used for bracing, begins to be 

 affected by the sea worm at or near low water much sooner 

 than vertical piling, and, chiefly at the ends where the 

 timber has been cut to fit and the creosote partly cut away, it 

 has been attacked after about eighteen years in this country 

 and in some instances sooner. The German Government 

 give statistics extending over fifty years, from which they 

 estimate the average life of creosoted telegraph poles to be 

 twenty and a half years, but many telegraph poles in Great 

 Britain have been in use for forty years. Of sixty poles 



