422 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO I69O-I. 



which from other accounts we find to be very near that of the city of Aleppo 

 in Syria. 



From the same person we have received the latitudes of the following places, 

 observed with a large quadrant. 



Moscow 55° 34', Yereslaw 57° 44', Wologda 59° 19', Woslak 61° 15', Ark- 

 angel 64° 30'. 



On the most seasonable Time for foiling Timber. By Robert Plot, LL. D. 



and R. S. Sac. N° 192, p. 455. 



The castom of felling timber here in the south of England, differs from that 

 of Staffordshire, only in two things, viz. In the time of felling, and manner 

 of barking. It being felled here in the spring, as soon as the sap is found to 

 be fully up, by the trees putting out, and then barked after the trees are pros- 

 trate, the sap yet remaining in their bodies : whereas, there it is first barked, 

 (in the spring as here) but before it is felled, the trees yet living and standing 

 all the summer, and not felled till the following winter, when the sap is fully in 

 rejxjse. 



Now in the spring season, and some time after, all the trees are pregnant, 

 and spend themselves, as animals do in their respective offsprings, in the pro- 

 duction of leaves and fruit, and so become weaker than at other times of the 

 year; their cavities and pores being then turgid with juices or sap, which, the 

 trees being felled at that time, still remain in the pores, having no way of 

 being otherwise spent, and there they putrify ; not only leaving the tree full of 

 these cavities, which render the timber weak ; but breeding a worm, as testified 

 by both Pliny and Mr. Evelyn, which will so exceedingly injure it, as to become 

 altogether unfit for great stress. Now all timber felled at this time of year, 

 whether the juices putrify, or otherwise evaporate, or dry away, is not only 

 subject to rift and gape, but to shrink so considerably, that a piece of such 

 timber, of a foot square, will usually shrink in breadth ^ of an inch ; than 

 which, says Vegetius, nothing is more pernicious if used for the building of 

 ships. To which Julius Caesar adds, that though ships may be made of such 

 moist timber, felled in the spring, yet they will certainly be slugs, not near so 

 good sailers as ships made of timber felled later in the year. 



In all which circumstances most of the ancients so very nearly agree, that 

 none of them advise the felling of timber for any sort of use before autumn at 

 soonest ; others, not till the trees have borne their fruit, which, says Theo- 

 phrastus, must always be proportionably later, as their fruits are ripe later in the 

 year : others again not till mid-winter : not till November says Palladius : nay, not 

 till the winter solstice, says Cato ; and then too in the decrease or wane of the 



