Wood Preserving by Painting. 
91 
These experiments again point ont the value of the high boiling coal 
tar distillates, and of the tar bases (bone oil is used in this connection 
because it is rich in these bases). Tar acids and volatile (low boiling) 
distillates are evidently valueless. 
Attempts to preserve timbers by superficial applications are as old as 
the first attempts in wood preserving. Charring timbers, painting, coat- 
ing with tar, or with solutions of tar, or pitch or asphalt in lighter oils, 
are all attempts in this direction. Even today the market is flooded .with 
patent preparations of the sort just indicated, passing under various 
names as “Carbolineum,” “Phenoline,” etc. The public has found these 
compounds far from reliable because so many worthless compounds are 
offered under those names, and looks with distruct upon preparations 
whose manufacturers seek to shield themselves by claiming that the 
wonderful composition of their preparation cannot be revealed by chem- 
ical analysis. 
In seaehing for data on the question whether wood could be preserved 
by these simple means, my attention was directed to a compound which 
is commercially known under a trade-mark, as “C. A. Wood Preserver/'’ 
which compound had been used by the Athletic Association of the Uni- 
versity of Texas, and about which Prof. R. L. Batts, then at the head of 
the Athletic Association, had the following to say : 
“The Athletic Association of the University of Texas has used the 
‘C. A. Wood Preserver’ with most satisfactory results. Pine posts treated 
with it were sound after being in the ground three years. Posts not 
treated were decayed after a single year.” 
This led me to analyze the article, and I found that it contains 85% 
of indifferent (neutral) tar oils, boiling point above 270° C., a relatively 
large per cent. — about 4% — of acridine, and a small amount of lighter 
oils, with only a trace of tar acids. It is free from the tarry and carbon- 
aceous matter. By comparing this with results set forth above, we find 
it may be considered as a compound of only those portions of coal tar 
distillates which have been found to be of any value, to the exclusion of 
useless portions, such as soluble acids, and the low boiling, hence volatile 
oils; and also to the exclusion of the thick carbonaceous matter which 
would close the pores and form a coating. The constituents are exactly 
those found by analysis in the seventeen (17) samples of creosoted tim- 
bers which had been exposed for long periods, up to thirty-two years, as 
stated above. I have since learned that extensive experiments are being 
made with this preserver at various places, among which may be men- 
tioned the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College, at College Sta- 
tion, Texas ; the Agricultural College at Knoxville, Tennessee ; Clemson 
Agricultural College, at Clemson, South Carolina; San Diego, Cali- 
fornia; Havana, Cuba; the United States Navy Yards at Key West, 
