55 



them into insoluble matter, will preserve it from decomposition for almost any length of time. 



What is most remarkable in these chancres, is that the sappy portions of timber are 

 rendered by most processes quite as enduring as the duramen or more solid parts. Before 

 describing any of the processes of preserving timber, I will make a remark or two on the 

 season best adapted for cutting- and seasoning of timber. 



Various opinions are entertained in respect to the most appropriate season for felling trees 

 for timber. If felled after the leaves have dropped, in Autumn, and before the sap commences 

 to flow, say in February or March, (I speak of tropical climates,) the bark adheres firmly to 

 the aburnum, and will if kept dry under cover, continue to do so several successive seasons. 

 Fuel of this description is decidedly preferable to that which is cut at a time when the sap 

 is in circulation and which invariably looses its bark in seasoning ; and, by a parity of reasoning, 

 timber cut, dressed, and kept dry in a similar manner should be preferred to that which was 

 cut, etc., while the sap flowed. 



There is another substantial reason why trees felled at the season of the recession of the 

 sap should be preferred, which is, if the authority of those who have made vegetable physi- 

 ology a study may be relied on, "that the sap vessels furnish no materials to trees for 

 immediate assimilation after the middle or latter part of August, but transmit and deposit 

 magazines of starch, etc., for the future growth of trees when the warm weather accedes and 

 the sap vessels renew their accretory functions. 



If such be the fact, as the circulation of the sap must measurably cease to flow in trees 

 which have been felled during the prevalence of frosts, it follows as a necessary consequence 

 that timber from trees which contain starch will be less liable to decomposition than that in 

 which the starch has been converted to saccharine matter, because it is removed a stage farther 

 from such change — provided they both be similarly treated. 



But when trees have been felled, dressed into timber, and placed under cover for air- 

 seasoning, or in water for water-seasoning, with proper expedition, there can be no very 

 important difference in respect to the period of the year in which they have been subjected to 

 the leveling action of the woodman, becanse the fluids in the sap vessels, in the first case, 

 become so inspissated, or rather concentrated, as to possess antiseptic properties, which can only 

 be disturbed by change of condition; and in the second case, they become so diluted, if exposed 

 for a sufficient length of tin i^, as to possess few if any of the elements of speedy and 

 direct decay. 



