16 MR. moseley's address. 



as unsettled in Europe as in this country, or rather the prevail- 

 ing opinion in both countries is probably erroneous. It appears 

 to be the more general opinion in Europe and in this country ^ 

 and the practice has conformed to this opinion, to fell timber in 

 the winter, or while the sap is down ; or to be more precisely 

 accurate, in the month of February in the old of the moon. In 

 France, by a royal ordinance of the year 1669, the time of 

 felling naval timber was fixed from the first of October to the 

 fifteenth of April, in the wane of the moon. Napoleon, having 

 adopted the opinion that ships built of timber felled at the mo- 

 ment of vegetation, must be liable to rapid decay, and require 

 immediate repairs, from the effects of the fermentation of the 

 sap, in those pieces which had not been felled in the proper sea- 

 son, issued a circular order to the commissioners of the forests, 

 that the time for felling naval timber should be abridged, and 

 that it should be in the decline of the moon, from the first of 

 November to the fifteenth of March. Commodore Porter, of 

 the American Navy, in a communication which appeared in 

 the American Farmer, gives it as his opinion, that the most pro- 

 per season for felling timber, with a view to its durability, is 

 in the winter, when the sap has ceased to circulate. He is of 

 opinion that the moon has a powerful influence upon timber, as 

 well as upon many other things. 



Notwithstanding this powerful array of authority for felling 

 timber in the winter, while the sap is down, to increase its dura- 

 bility, many experiments have been made which seem to estab- 

 lish the fact that timber cut when the sap is in most active cir- 

 culation, is most durable. Mr. Benjamin Poor, the owner or 

 occupant of Indian Hill Farm, in this county, in a communica- 

 tion to Gorham Parsons, Esq. published in the Massachusetts 

 Agricultural Repository, states the following fact as within his 

 own knowledge and observation. His grandfather, in the fall of 

 the year 1812, selected two white oak trees, size, situation, gen- 

 eral appearance as to age and health and the soil, as near alike 

 as possible. In the month of March following, in the old of the 

 moon, one tree was cut, the timber carried to the njill and saw- 

 ed into suitable timber and scanthng for an ox cart, and put up to 



