BARK-BED. ' 
tree and the paper-mulberry-tree, is macerated 
and beaten in water into a thin and flexible tex- 
ture, which serves the same purposes as linen. 
The inner layers of the Daphne lagetto, or lace- 
bark-tree of Jamaica, are, with but slight mani- 
pulation, converted into a soft, flexible, delicate, 
beautiful reticulated texture closely resembling 
lace. The quantity of bark for tanning or dyeing 
imported into the United Kingdom in 1842, was 
645,747 ewt., of which 310,885 cwt. was from Bel- 
gium, and 159,168 cwt. from Holland. Of Peru- 
vian bark the amount imported in 1842 was 1,125 
ewt.—Monteath’s Forester’s Guide—Davy’s Agri- 
cultural Chemistry—Keith’s Botanical Lexicon.— 
Boussingault’s Rural Economy.—Liebig’s Chem- 
istry of Agr—Loudon’s Gardener's Magazine.— 
Journal of the R. Agr. Society —Mill’s Husbandry. 
—Marshall’s County Reports —Mortimer’s Husban- 
dry—Mirbel’s Traite d’ Anatomie et de Physiologie 
vegetale. | 
BARK-BED. A bed of tanners’-bark in a 
glass-covered brick pit or low glazed brick house. 
Its object is to produce and maintain warmth 
and dampness by the fermentation of the bark ; 
and it is used for the cultivation of pine-apples, 
and such other tropical plants as require what 
| gardeners call bottom heat ; but, except for raising 
young plants from cuttings, it is not employed 
for the cultivation of greenhouse-plants. Bark 
in a coarse form or in large pieces, and not 
ground or greatly broken bark, should be em- 
ployed, else a slowly evolved and a steady heat 
will not be produced ; and it should be spread in 
the sunshine and covered with mats till fermen- 
tation commences, and then deposited in the 
glazed brick pit, where its use is required. The 
heat, for two or three days, is much too great ; 
but when it has fallen to 90°, it is in a proper 
state for the pots containing the plants to be 
plunged in it ; and it may continue to be used 
while it slowly decreases to 66°, and may then be 
renewed to about 70° or 80° by such a stirring 
as will produce a second fermentation, or by mix- 
ing with it a small quantity of yeast. But even the 
best bark-bed seldom maintains heat so long or 
so uniformly as is desirable, and generally either 
fails in some degree to achieve its purpose, or 
requires to be aided by steam-pipes, hot-water, 
or smoke-flues ; and, under the improved prac- 
tises in horticulture, it is rapidly in the course 
of being discontinued and forgotten. The use of 
steam-pipes, and pipes of hot-water in particular, 
begins to be so well understood, and so generally 
appreciated, that the bark-bed or bark-stove is 
seen to be a clumsy and comparatively inefficient 
appliance. Yet where the old method of bottom- 
heat is still preferred, or where it is required on 
only a small scale, the use of oak-leaves, or of 
any other vegetable substance containing a large 
proportion of tannin, will serve the purpose quite 
as well as tanners’ spent bark, and in many in- 
stances far better. 
BARKING. The artificial peeling of the bark 
8S SSS ee eee —————————————— 
BARKING. 
333 
of trees. The chief practice of it is upon the oak 
and other tanniniferous trees, for the supply of 
bark to tanners. The barking of oak is usually 
practised at any time from the beginning of May 
till the middle of July ; but the sooner it is per- 
formed in spring, the better is the bark, the 
more easily is it detached, and the greater an im- 
petus is given to the re-growth of coppice-wood. 
When the sap has begun to rise, and before the 
leaf is completely developed, the very best crisis 
has arrived for barking. After the sap freely 
ascends to the leaf, and after the leaf is fully 
formed, the bark becomes less juicy in itself, and 
more difficult to be detached from the wood ; 
and when the cambium or what is called the 
black sap is descending, the excorticated bark 
begins to throw off a scarf from its exterior, be- 
comes dark-coloured in its innermost layers, and 
loses a comparatively large proportion of its 
most useful juicy properties. All oak-bark for 
the tanner ought, at latest, to be removed from 
the tree before the third week of June; and 
every ton of it which is removed after the first 
of July is not only impoverished in tannin, but 
weighs two cwt. less than if it had been removed 
before the end of May, or at latest in the first 
week of June. The birch and the larch may be 
peeled nearly a month earlier than the oak. Yet 
the birch is usually not barked till July or even 
the beginning of August ; for its dead bark, 
which is useless to the tanner, and which would 
impede the grinding of the inner bark in his 
mills, cannot properly be separated and thrown 
away till the alburnum of the season is fairly 
formed, and therefore not till about the end of | 
July. The trées to be barked are either the cut 
thinnings of the coppice, or the felled old oaks of 
the forest : and they are dealt with by the for- 
ester and his best instructed assistants in a way 
which will be noticed in our article on Coppiczs 
and Woops. But in cutting down the trees, no 
portion of bark should, on any account, be peeled 
from the root or stool, and care should be used 
to make each tree so fall as not to tear or other- 
wise damage the stool-bark of its’neighbours. 
The prevailing method of barking, and the 
tools usually employed in it, previous to com- 
paratively recent improvements, are described as 
follows by Nicol :—“ A piece of vacant ground, 
at a convenient side of the wood,” says he, “is 
to be looked: out, to which the large and small 
wood is to be carried, here to undergo the opera- 
tion of barking. The barkers are furnished with 
light short-handled mallets made of ashwood, the 
head about 8 inches long, 3 inches in diameter 
at the face, and the other end blunt, but some- 
what wedge-shaped ; and with sharp wedges, 
made of the same sort of timber, somewhat spat- 
ula-shaped: these, from their form, may either 
be driven by the mallet, or pushed by the hand. 
The barkers are also provided with a smooth 
whinstone, about 6 or 8 inches in diameter on 
the face, and 4 or 5 inches thick. The young 
