1810 ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. PART III. 



atmosphere after the bark is removed, the iniury to even the sap wood must 

 be trifling if this evaporation is allowed to take place, and the hard wood can 

 sustain no injury at all. It has also been recommended to bark oak trees 

 before cutting them down, and to leave them standing for a year afterwards; 

 but this can be attended with no other advantage than that of evaporating the 

 sap from the outside wood more rapidly than would otherwise be the case ; 

 and this rapid evaporation is, in some seasons and situations, and especially in 

 warm climates, apt to produce rents and clefts in the trunk and boughs of the 

 trees. Nichols, who had great experience as a purveyor of oak timber for 

 the navy, found that, by divesting trees, before they are fully seasoned, of 

 their sappy coats, the exterior parts of the wood, or heart, by exposure to 

 the air, suddenly contract, and shut up their pores, so as to prevent the escape 

 of the internal juices : hence a fermentation soon begins, and rottenness is 

 the certain consequence. This does not happen when timber is seasoned 

 with its sap on ; the outward parts of the wood not being then suddenly con- 

 tracted, on accounted of being sheltered from the sun and wind by the coats 

 of sap which surround it, and the juices freely evaporating through the spongy 

 substance of the sap. (Meth. t &c., p. 45.) " Oak timber, cut into lengths, and 

 sided (squared on the sides), soon after it is felted," he says, " and laid 

 up in piles till wanted for use, is often found, in the dock-yards, very defec- 

 tive and rotten, particularly at the heart. The annual coats of wood of 

 which trees are composed, and which encompass them like hoops, and hold 

 them together, are in part cut off; and the juices flying off very quick, fre- 

 quently cause them to split or crack, and the cracks or fissures receive the 

 wet, which soon bring on rottenness." (Ibid.) " By long experience," he 

 continues, " it is unequivocally proved, that the best way hitherto known of 

 keeping or seasoning oak timber, previously to its being used in ship-building, 

 is in a rough hewed state, with its sap on ; not only on account of applying 

 it, when wanted, to the most profitable uses, but by lying in the sap for two, 

 three, or more years* it seasons gradually, and never splits or opens, as it 

 frequently does when the sap is taken off, by siding or cornering it when green, 

 and laying it in piles, and whereby it receives very considerable damage, and 

 very often is entirely spoiled. This is never the case if it be suffered to 

 season in the sap : for, though the sap is certain to perish and moulder away 

 in a few years, let it be treated in whatever manner it may with a view to 

 prevent its perishing, still the heart will be greatly improved by this mode of 

 treatment, and, I believe, will endure many years longer for it ; and certainly, 

 when it is connected, it will have the great advantage of not twisting and flying 

 about, as when worked green." (Ibid., p. 43.) With respect to the practice 

 of stripping oak trees standing, Mr. Nichols is clearly of opinion that it is of 

 little or no use in rendering the sap wood as good as heart wood. He relates 

 an instance of an oak which was stripped of its bark in the spring of 1784, and 

 felled in the spring of 1788. "The tree," he says, "appeared, by the num- 

 ber of its annual coats, to have been 110 years old at the time of its being 

 stripped; it contained 21 coats of sap, which were in a perishing state; so 

 that the notion which some have entertained, that the sappy parts of oak trees 

 become as hard or equal to the heart for strength and durability, by the ope- 

 ration of stripping them standing of their bark, and letting them remain till 

 they die before they are felled, is chimerical." (p. 73.) " The Count de 

 Buffon has incontestably proved, by his experiments, that, by stripping oak 

 trees of their bark standing, and letting them remain till they die, before they 

 are felled, the heart, or perfect wood, thereof will be considerably increased 

 in strength and density ; and it is also proved by experience, that the sappy 

 part, or imperfect wood, will not be much altered thereby ; at first, and while 

 it is green, it will be found harder and stronger than the sap of trees felled in 

 the usual way ; but after a little time, and as the juices evaporate and fly off, 

 it will perish and moulder away, as the sap of oak trees always will do, let 

 them be treated in whatever manner they may with a view to prevent it. 

 Every experienced ship-builder or carpenter well knows that wherever any 



