103 



THE QUALITY OF COXIFEEOUS TIMBEE AS 

 AFFECTED BY SYLYICTLTUEAL TEEATMEYT. 



By W. SoMEEYiLLE, D.^Ec, B.Sc. F.E.S.E., F.L.S. 



While all acknowleclge that much may be done by careful 

 seasonmg and the use of suitable preseryatives and antiseptics 

 to increase some of the valuable properties of timber, it is pro- 

 bably not so generally admitted that the quahty of timber may 

 be materially influenced by the conditions under which the trees 

 exist in the forest. To anyone who is not intimately acqiiainted 

 with the anatomy of wood and the laws of growth, it doe? 

 indeed seem scarcely possible that anything the forester can do 

 for growing trees will have any material inlinence on the 

 quality of the resulting produce, however much his method of 

 treatment may affect the quantitjj of the yield. It is too often 

 supposed that Spruce timber, for instance, is just Spruce timber 

 no matter whether it is yielded by trees scattered singly through 

 a park or by those that have stood in dense masses in a close 

 wood ; no matter whether the soil is good or bad, or the eleva- 

 tion low or high. This view appears to receive strong support 

 from the fact that our home-grown supplies, drawn though they 

 be from plantations that have been constantly imder careful 

 supervision, are entirely neglected by architects of high- class 

 structures in favour of material that has been yielded by 

 primeval forests where the management has been entirely lef: to 

 nature. That this is the case there is no denying, for our foreign 

 imports of timber are nearly aU drawn from the great natural 

 forests of North America, the North of Europe, and other parts 

 of the world ; but it does not foUow on that accoimt that man 

 cannot improve upon nature. A great natural forest that has 

 been uninterfered with by man's hand teaches much that 

 may be profitably imitated and much that may be advan- 

 tageously avoided. Our imports testify as to the high qnality 

 of much of the timber produced imder such circumstances ; 

 but the cost, although it appears to be nothing, is really out of 

 all proportion to the returns. When the lumbermen invade the 

 primeval forests and find trees two to three hundred years old. 



