302 INFERIORITY OF 



twenty years. It is not easy to imagine how a 

 more desirable specimen of oak timber could be 

 procured ; and it certainly looked well. The co- 

 lour was good, the grain close, and the texture 

 very hard and firm to the tool. Well, a piece of 

 this same oak was let into the ground, in a dry 

 soil, and sp situated that no drip fell upon it, or 

 trickled down it ; and it remained between three 

 and four years. Upon its being taken up, all 

 that portion of it which had been in the ground 

 was in the same condition as the alburnum, or 

 sap-wood, of very old oak piles when they are 

 taken out of the water, more like compact clay 

 than timber ; and when dried, it " broke short," 

 and crumbled into powder. In colour it was 

 more like rotten pear-tree than rotten oak, for 

 there was no blackening, and yet the soil con- 

 tained a good deal of iron, so that the timber must 

 have been deficient both in tannin and gallic acid. 

 It was not, as has been said, the sap-wood, 

 but the very best part of the tree, and from in- 

 spection of the cross-cut, the tree had not grown 

 with any very extraordinary rapidity. As little 

 was the injury done at the " weather line," just 

 by the surface of the earth, where the durability 

 of timber is put to the severest test ; for the de- 

 cay extended not only to the entire portion of the 

 part that was in the ground, but also to a cross 

 piece, which was nearly two feet below the sur- 

 face, and which, of course, had no weather-line, 

 from which its decay could originate. Some 

 pieces of American white pine, which is consi- 

 dered to be the worst timber of the whole pine 

 tribe, were put down for the purpose of keeping 

 the durable " heart of oak" steady, till the earth 



