PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 



A HANDY-BOOK on Home and Foreign Timber, for 

 ship and house building purposes, is, in the opinion of 

 many, much required. The botanical treatises which 

 are accessible are too strictly scientific in their form 

 and treatment to interest the general reader, and they 

 lack that practical application of knowledge to the 

 wants of the shipwright and carpenter, which it is 

 one of the aims of this book to give. Hence, I 

 have endeavoured to concentrate into one form all 

 the information which books and long experience 

 could give, and so to arrange the materials as to 

 make them intelligible and acceptable alike to the 

 master builder and apprentice. 



Keeping this in view, I have introduced into the 

 work the substance of a course of lectures on the 

 properties of timber, which I delivered at the Royal 

 School of Naval Architecture at South Kensington; 



