FELLING IN SEASON AND BORER. 81 
Said Mr. James Burnett, Chief Engineer, Railways, to the Forest 
Commission (Report, p. 81) :— 
Our Department has always tried to get the timber for its use felled during 
the winter-time, but we have never yet been able to succeed thoroughly in doing 
so. We are quite sure that the winter-felled timber is the best. The sap is then 
down, and the timber does not warp and split in the same way as timber felled at 
other times of the year does. 
Other witnesses, all of them practical men, spoke in the same strain 
in giving evidence to the Forest Commission. 
Says Blair in his useful paper on the ‘* Building Materials of Otago,”’ 
** All the Black-pine posts erected in the winter of 1861 are still in good 
‘preservation, while those felled and used a few months later were more 
or less decayed some years ago.’’ 
Says Laslet in his classical work on timbers, speaking of English 
Oak, ‘‘ Winter-felled logs are sounder, less rent by shakes, and with less 
incipient decay at the centre.”’ 
Timber in Europe is nearly all felled in winter, but not quite 
always. In the Black Forest, where the forestry is of the best, timber 
is felled in summer and is held to be as good as winter-felled timber. 
(‘‘ Journal of a Forest Tour,’’, p. 17.) Professor S. J. Record, of Yale, 
says, “‘ The amount of sap in a tree is fully as much, if not more, during 
the winter than in summer. Winter-felled wood is not drier than 
summer-felled; it is likely to be wetter.’ (‘‘ Mechanical Properties 
of Wood,’’ p. 74.) This statement will not be readily accepted. My 
experiment made with Blue-gum in South Africa (Hucalyptus globulus), 
described in ‘‘ Australian Forestry ’’ (Perth, 1916), proves the contrary 
in the case of one tree; and most axemen used to cutting into trees in 
autumn and spring find the timber wetter in spring. In any case, timber 
felled in autumn and winter, seasons better than timber felled in spring 
and summer, for two reasons: (1) The sapwood dries more slowly; 
(2) the heartwood absorbs moisture at cut surfaces in winter, and thus 
tends afterwards to dry out more in harmony with the sapwood and so 
to split less.* 
BorER tn KAvRI. 
Felling Kauri in early winter means that there may be an interval of 
nearly a year between the felling and the sawing, thus exposing the timber 
to some danger of the borer. In rare cases the borer will attack Kauri as 
soon as it is felled, and by four or five months this lability to the 
attack of the borer has to be seriously considered. However, means can 
be taken to entirely obviate this risk of borer, such as barking and 
brushing over with zine solution, creosote, or other convenient antiseptic. 
In Europe barking after felling is the common practice. I am of opinion 
that the felling-period should be limited to late summer and early 
winter—say, May to July. That has been the practice in this class of 
forest in South Africa ever since they have had systematic forestry there. 
Captain Broun, in a paper read before the Auckland Institute (July, 
1876), describes the beetle that does so much damage to Kauri as 
Nenocnema spinipes. The female beetle deposits her eggs under the bark, 
and in a very short time—a few weeks—the larve are boring into the 
sapwood. The common remedy for this in Europe is barking the timber 


* Heartwood, when complete, is dead tissue, and theoretically should hold no more 
moisture than air-seasoned cut timber. (See also “ Australian Forestry, pp. 95, 222. 
231.) ‘It is understood that the Victorian Forest Department is now conducting an 
investigation of the subject as regards Eucalypts. 
