TIMBER. 



125 



where the rot is incipient, this maturing is very irre- 

 gular, in the view of the cross section dashing out 

 into angles and irregularities, and being darker red 

 than in the healthy plants : in those where rot had 

 made considerable progress, the red-wood was with- 

 in a circle or two of the bark. This approach of 

 red-wood to the outside is so regularly connected 

 with rot, that we needed no other indication of the 

 roots being unfit for knees, and therefore not worth 

 grubbing, than merely a slight notch by two cuts of 

 a hatchet. 



Those kinds of timber whose matured wood as- 

 sumes a brown or reddish colour, are generally much 

 less susceptible of change, either by simple putrefac- 

 tion or by attack of fungi, or gnawing of insects, 

 than those whose matured wood remains of a whitish 

 colour. In many of the latter, there does not even 

 appear to be any particular change of constitution, 

 or greater capability of resisting corruption or in- 

 sects, between the alburnum and mature wood, al- 

 though the difference between the two is generally 

 perceptible when the cross section is drying, and im- 

 mediate, as in the brown or red; there being no gra- 

 dual change or softening in either between the ma- 

 ture and immature. Although the change in those 

 which become hxowa and red does not much affect 



