98 
Indian Forest Records. 
[Vot. III. 
treated, and to the fact that the lines on which the work was carried 
out followed too closely European methods without adapting them 
sufficiently to Indian conditions and the varying quality of Indian 
timbers. 
Present Position of Affairs. 
At the present time there can be no doubt that the possible supply of 
sleepers is insufficient to meet the demand. As a proof of this assertion 
it may be stated that iron sleepers are now being used and that very 
large numbers of Jarrah and other Australian woods, as also creosoted 
Red Pine, are being annually imported into India, while the price of 
the better Indian sleeper timbers is ever increasing. The output of good 
Indian sleepers cannot be expected to increase very materially in the 
near future in any case not until the forests which had been so heavily 
overworked when taken over by the Forest Department have had time to 
recover; this is in most cases a very slow process. 
The only way to make up the shortage appears to be either to use 
iron sleepers or to extend the use of imported sleepers or by applying 
antiseptic treatment to our better auxiliary species of timber in 
order to render them suitable for sleepers. 
The former difficulties which rendered unsuccessful the treatment of 
the various species of timber with different antiseptics have now to a great 
measure disappeared. The most important factor against successful treat¬ 
ment was its excessive cost. At the time when the first attempts were 
made to impregnate sleepers in India, their market value was hardly 
two-thirds of what it is now, so that the margin of cost of treatment was 
very small as compared to what it is to-day. Again, the various methods 
of processing timber have been much improved in this respect, and the 
attention of specialists has been given as much to the question of 
reducing the cost of treatment as to the possibility of finding new methods 
by which timber can be treated. The result of these enquiries has been 
the introduction of the “ Riiping process” by which the quantity of 
creosote it is necessary to inject into the timber has been reduced^ by 
35 per cent, to 40 per cent. ; the very extensive use of the “ Open Tank 
Method,” by which the cost of plant is reduced to a nominal figure; and 
« Mixed Impregnation” by which timber is treated with a cheap salt a,nd 
the salt protected by a small quantity of a somewhat expensive 
non-volatile insoluble oil, the combination of the two substances 
reducing the price of treatment as compared with the cost of processing 
with the oil only. 
( in ) 
