378 PROPERTIES AND USES OF TIMBER. 



vessels may be built of larch at little more than one- 

 fourth of the cost of building them in oak, and even 

 at much less expense than if built of Memel or Nor- 

 wegian fir ; and 1 have no hesitation in asserting, 

 that, if not so lasting as the former, it will endure 

 much more fatigue than either of the latter. Larch 

 wood seems to have the peculiar quality of acquiring 

 hardness by being exposed to wind and water, which, 

 as already said, is the most trying situation in which 

 wood can be placed, and which is so fatal to other 

 timber of the fir species, and even affects, by degrees, 

 the British oak. I have seen some larch-planks ta- 

 ken from the bottom of an old lighter, which had 

 been built twenty-five years before, chiefly of the 

 best Memel fir. With the exception of the larch- 

 planks, the whole fabric was rotten almost to pow- 

 der. During the twenty-five years the vessel lasted, 

 these planks had been exposed alternately to wet 

 and drought, both in salt and fresh water, and they 

 did not shew even the most distant symptoms of de- 

 cay. On the contrary, they were so hard as to re- 

 sist the edge of the best-tempered carpenter's axe, 

 and even the saw made but a slight impression up- 

 on them when applied crosswise. When tried to 

 be split with wedges, they shewed no aptness to 

 splinter, a quality of great importance in ship-build- 



