CHAPTER VII. 
EXPERIMENTS ON TIMBER. 
Having treated of the principal defects to which timber 
trees are liable during their growth—and perhaps they 
are all that need be now considered, as others of a less 
important character will be noticed later on, whenever 
they affect any particular class of wood—I will pass for 
the present to the description in detail of the various 
timber trees, observing, by-the-way, that the tables 
appended are the results of experiments made trans¬ 
versely, tensilely, and vertically on specimens taken 
from the wood of the tree described. In some cases 
these are very numerous, and will be, I consider, 
invaluable, as showing the range and variation of the 
strength and specific gravities of each wood ; further, 
they include some rare, and at present scarcely known, 
species of timber, which may at a future day be in 
request in this country for building purposes. 
It need scarcely be stated here, since it will be well 
understood, that to classify and collect the notes in 
order to record these tests of strength, &c., in timber, it 
has taken a very long time, and, but for the exceptional 
opportunities I had during a long course of service in 
the royal dockyards and elsewhere, it would have been 
impossible for me to have obtained these results. 
While employed surveying timber for the Navy in 
New Zealand, and subsequently in India, Belgium, 
