330 REID ON THE ECONOMY OF TIMBER. 



and though we may hail ** Saw Mill " Companies as a boon, yet 

 of far greater value is the Furniture, or Pail and Tub Factory. 



There is a great deal of waste land in the Province, that with a 

 little care and judicious inspection could be made to furnish timber 

 either by trimming undergrowth, or by planting land that could 

 grow pine trees even better than fir, alder, and scrub. This would 

 have the additional advantage of making our streams perennial, 

 instead of dry, a good part of one-half, and frozen the other part of 

 the year, with freshets, chiefly, intervening. 



Thus our climate would be kept from deteriorating, which has 

 been proved to be the case w^here forests have been cleared over 

 large areas. They modify frost, heat, rainstorms, freshets, droughts 

 and destructive lightning discharges. We must diminish the use of 

 wood on railways as fuel — this is now being done — and for sleepers, 

 which must be done, by some preservative process, that will arrest 

 their decay and in so far prevent accidents. This, however, will 

 cure itself as it has in England, where railway sleepers of inferior 

 wood well preserved, last for more than thirty years and still sound ; 

 with us they serve for two or three years, when they become so 

 much decomposed as to be dangerous. 



PRESERVATION OF TIMBER FROM FIRE AND DECAY. 



From Decay. — Timber exposed alternately to dampness and 

 dryness, suffers injury or absolute destruction, owing to the amount 

 of exposure, lapse of time, and kind of wood; and various methods 

 have been adopted to overcome this difficulty. Charring the exposed 

 portion, was supposed to be of benefit, but it will not prevent the 

 entrance of water and air which destroy the interior. 



By steaming or boiling timber, which coagulates the albuminoid 

 substances and washes away soluble salts, there is given a modicum 

 of preservation which is not a commercial success for this purpose. 



It is known that the resinous and odorous woods — pine, lignum- 

 vita, cedar, &c., — will endure the longest, and efforts have been 

 made to add to other woods substances of this character, but the 

 greatest difficulty has been to cause resinous and fatty substances to 

 permeate the pores of all kinds of timber, and without which the 

 outside protection does not much avail. 



