Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1874 — The Preservation of Timber. [ARTICLE]

The Preservation of Timber.

An Arkansas correspondent of the Scientific American says: “I came here thirty years since and began clearing land and building houses with hewn logs and boards split from the tree. After, several years’ residence I noticed very often that pieces of the same kind of timber decayed more quickly than others; and, after much thought and observation, I came to the conclusion that timber felled after the leaf was fully grown lasted the longest. I noticed that- timber felled when the leaf first commenced to grow rotted the sap oft very quickly, but the heart remained aound; that timber felled after the fall of the leaf rotted in the heart, even when apparently sound on the outside. When fire-wood cut in the winter was put on the fire the sap came out of the sap-wood and next the bark. I noticed also that all our lasting wood had but little sap at any time in the heart—such as cedar, mulberry, sassafras, and ypress.

“ A cypress post cut in the summer of 1838 is still sound, although exposed to all weathers; while one of the same kind of tiriiber cut in the winter of 1856 and painted has rotted in the heart. 1 sawyesterday a piece of gum plank which I sawed in the summer of 1859, that has lain ever since and is perfectly sound; while oak timber that was felled in the winter before is now entirely rotten. “My conclusion, then, is: Cut timber after full leaf —say in July and August—to get the most last from it. The sap goes into the heart of the tree after leaf fall and causes decay':*’ As Aberdeen preacher recently com; mented in the following complimentary way upon the conversational value of men and women: “ There is the same difference between their tongues as between the hoar and minute hand—one goeasten times as fast and the other sig nifies ten times as much."