ARTIFICIAL PRESERVATION OF TIMBER. 



355 



feet. These the company sells in the open market. Six thousand of them 

 had been sent to Staten Island during the last year; others to Sydney, 

 Nova Scotia; Atlantic City, and so on. These piles receive from twelve 

 to eighteen pounds of the oil per cubic foot. The yard contains all sorts 

 and sizes of timber, lumber, planks and piles. They are constantly arriving 

 on vessels from all parts of the country, and, after treatment, are shipped 

 far and wide. Much of the material is exported to European and Asiatic 

 countries, but the bulk is used along the atlantic seaboard from" Labrador 

 to Florida, Mexico and South America. Some red and white oak is received 

 for treatment, but the principal timber is the common yellow pine of Vir- 

 ginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. It is comparatively cheap, and makes 



>5^%T 



Yfi 



INTERIOR OF CYLINDER HOUSE. 



excellent material for practically every purpose to which creosoted wood 



can be put. 



The treating plant consists of four immense iron cylinders, six feet 

 in diameter and one hundred feet long, capable of standing a pressure 

 of 1 80 pounds to the square inch, with movable heads weighing over three 

 tons each. Into and through these cylinders lead tracks, and upon these 

 tracks move the metal cars carrying the timber to be treated. In each 

 cylinder are large and heavy pipe heaters or coils, capable of maintaining 

 2;o degrees Fahrenheit of heat (which is the maximum heat used). There 

 are three steam boilers of 250 horse-power, two super-heaters, pyrometers, 

 gauges, condensers, etc.; three large vacuum pumps (16 inches), two pressure 

 pumps, two large pumps for handling oil, and three pumps for water and 



fire puq^oses. 



24 



