Part II.] Pearson: Antiseptic Treatment of Timber. 
97 
Chapter IV. 
PROPOSALS AS TO THE LINES ON WHICH THE FUTURE IN¬ 
VESTIGATION INTO THE ANTISEPTIC TREATMENT OF 
SLEEPER-WOODS SHOULD BE CARRIED OUT. 
(i) General Remarks. 
Probable causes of failure to introduce Wood-Antiseptics into 
MORE GENERAL USE IN INDIA. 
Before making definite proposals as to the lines on which further 
experiments should be carried out with antiseptics, it is necessary to 
briefly review the causes of failure in the past. In Chapter I it has 
been stated that during the fifties and sixties of the last century, several 
large impregnating plants were erected by the different railway com¬ 
panies, by which either creosote, copper sulphate or chloride of zinc was 
forced into the timber, and later the Bombay, Baroda and Central India 
Railway experimented with Haskinized sleepers, while many experi¬ 
ments on a smaller scale with timbers treated in different ways have from 
time to time been carried out with varying success. 
With the exception of the creosoted Red Pine sleeper imported from 
Europe by a few railway companies and the application of tar by others, 
the method of preserving sleeper-woods by the help of antiseptics is not 
in general use in India. It is true that timber used for other purposes 
in India is treated with the various patent antiseptic solutions now on 
the market, but their use is not nearly so general as is the case in 
European countries. 
The reason for this backward state of affairs would have been more 
easy to explain 50 years ago than it is to-day. The quantity of sleeper- 
wood then required was not so great as it is at the present time nor were 
the prices of timber so high, so that the question not being at that time 
of primary importance, the first attempt to obtain satisfactory results, 
which were not successful, were not persevered in. 
Another reason for discontinuing the work and closing down the large 
plants erected during the middle of the last century was the excessive 
cost of treating the timber. 
Another cause to which former failure is attributed was the imper¬ 
fect knowledge of the various methods by which timber could then be 
( 170 ) 
