DURABILITY. 85 



regions are usually felled during summer, and the logs com- 

 pletely barked, the wood usually cracks and is thus exposed to 

 infection. The wood, raised above the ground on logs, remains 

 in the forest until heavy snow falls, it is then dragged to the 

 waterside for floating, only reaching the sawmills after being 

 many weeks in the water. The firewood, still wet, is often 

 stacked in sheltered places not exposed to free currents of 

 air. The logs are rolled into great heaps in the yards of the 

 sawmills without any cover ; balks are also left lying on the 

 bare ground. Whatever wood is at once converted at the 

 sawmill and properly dried, remains free from decay, but logs 

 lying on the ground all through the summer without proper 

 arrangement and only sawn during autumn or winter, or even 

 in the following spring, and half- dry balks worked into new 

 buildings, necessarily become intersected with red and black 

 stripes, spotted and decayed. 



Broad-leaved or coniferous wood felled in winter, and partially 

 barked, is not exposed to infection while lying in the forest. 

 If, moreover, all logs are slightly raised above the ground on 

 poles, and carted to the depot, there at once converted and 

 the pieces gradually dried under shelter, and timber only used 

 for building after two to three years' exposure in airy places, 

 then all reasonable precautions have been taken to ensure 

 durability. 



If at the present time, more complaints are made than 

 was formerly the case of the rapid decay of building and 

 other timber, especially in districts where spruce is used, the 

 reason for this is to be found in the treatment the wood meets 

 with in large depots, rather than in the forest and during trans- 

 port where suitable precautions are taken to preserve it, 

 the reverse being the case in large timber-depots. Enormous 

 quantities of logs are collected at the large sawmills in 

 order that work may go on continuously from one felling- 

 season to the next, and just as populous cities spread disease 

 amongst human beings, so do these large timber-depots spread 

 spores of fungi in timber. Formerly the logs were distributed 

 amongst a great number of small sawmills, and the wood was 

 converted and dried rapidly. 



