SEASONING AND IMPREGNATION OF TIMBER 283 
For this purpose they use loblolly pine, which has a 
great deal of sapwood into which the creosote will penetrate 
much more readily than into the harder, long-leaved pine 
which we call pitch pine.^ 
Fairly seasoned, sound pitch pine in logs or cut timber 
occasionally take in 15 lbs. per cubic foot, but this is rare, 
and the average injected is much less, as the specification 
shows. Timber merchants in Great Britain think that 
even 7 lbs. per cubic foot is a strict specification for pitch 
pine, but if the timber is fairly dried and the oil heated 
and pressed as specified above there is no difficulty. Only 
recently several hundred logs of pitch pine were creosoted 
under the above specification, and there were only three or 
four which did not take in 7 lbs. per cubic foot at the first 
tanking ; 33 per cent, took in over 10 lbs. and several 13 
and 14 lbs. per cubic foot. They had been drying for about 
three months. 
The life of well-seasoned and properly creosoted timber, 
even in situations inimical to its life, is almost indefinite, 
and, as a proof of the advantages of the system, creosoted 
timber piles standing in a row with uncreosoted piles were 
perfectly intact after ten years, whilst the uncreosoted ones 
were badly eaten by the sea worm. Creosoted pitch pine 
piles have withstood the attacks of the luminoria on the 
north-eastern coast of Great Britain for over twenty years 
when untreated timber would have been rendered useless 
in half the time, and the Louisville and Nashville Railway 
Company have creosoted piles in their structures near New 
Orleans which have withstood the teredo for twenty-five 
years in a situation where this pest cuts down untreated 
piles in one or two years. 
Creosoted railway sleepers have never been removed 
^ In recent tests 28 lbs. of creosote per cubic foot was got into 
loblolly sleepers. 
