24 TIMBER AND TIMBER TREES. [cHap. 
had always been a deficiency of water, the extensive 
planting of trees has remedied the defect. 
It would seem that the fine trees found in forests 
and elsewhere, whether it be natural to them to have 
straight stems or curved ones, have not always been so 
fair looking or so symmetrically shaped as we find them 
when of an age and size fit for felling, 
but that in early life they have not 
unfrequently assumed a wavy, ram- 
bling, or, it may be, unsightly ap- 
pearance, which was only improved 
upon as they attained to greater 
strength and approached maturity. 
This supposition will, I think, be 
readily allowed by anyone who has 
passed through a copse, or maiden 
forest, in search of a straight sapling 
for a walking-stick, and experienced 
the difficulty of finding one suitable 
for the purpose. 
A short time since a piece of Oak 
timber of moderate dimensions came 
under my notice which fully illus- 
trated this fact, as it had sufficient 
of its wavy and rambling form laid 
open, while under conversion for em- 
ployment in ship-building, to satisfy 
the most sceptical that it could have 
had little of beauty to recommend it 
to notice during the first thirty years 
of its growth; while the large straight block of timber 
which encased it showed that later in life it had assumed 
a much fairer form, and was even considered, when 
