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AMERICAN TIMBER.

tion on board of one of the St. Lawrence steamers, informed me that he, on one occasion, lost 2,5007. by one raft, which grounded in descending a rapid and broke up. He said the safest size for a raft was from 40,000 to 50,000 square feet, or about one acre, and that five men were required to work a raft of that size.

The species of forest trees indigenous to different countries is an interesting subject connected with vegetable physiology. There are said to be about thirty forest trees indigenous to Great Britain, which attain the height of thirty feet; and in France there are about the same number. But according to the best authorities, there are no less than 140 species, which attain a similar height, indigenous to the United States.

To notice each of these numerous species, whose timber is employed by the Americans in the arts, even if I were able to do so, would greatly exceed the limits to which I am restricted by the nature of the present communication; and I shall therefore only make a few remarks regarding those timbers which are most highly prized and most extensively used in the ship carpentry and public works of the country.

The first which I shall notice is the Live Oak (Quercus virens,) so named because it is an evergreen, its leaves lasting during several years, and being partially renewed every spring. It grows only in the southern states, and is one of the most valuable of the American timbers. The duty imposed by our government on wood from the United States prevents its importation into Britain, and as live oak grows only in the United States, and is not found in Canada, it consequently never reaches this country as an article of commerce; the whole produce being consumed by the Americans themselves in ship-building. Its specific gravity is equal to, and in some cases greater than, that of water, and it is used along with white oak and cedar for the principal timbers of vessels. The climate, according to an American authority,* becomes mild enough for its growth near Norfolk, in Virginia, though at that place it is less multiplied and less vigorous than in more southerly latitudes. From Norfolk it spreads along the coast for a distance of 1,500 or 1,800 miles, extending beyond the mouths of the Mississippi. The sea air seems essential to its existence, for it is rarely found in the forests upon the main-land, and never more than fifteen or twenty miles from the shore. It is most abundant, most fully developed, and of the best quality, about the bays and creeks, and

1932.

The Sylva Americana, by J. D. Browne. Boston,

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on the numerous fertile islands which lie scattered for several hundred miles along the coast. The live oak is generally forty or fifty feet in height, and from one to two feet in diameter; but it is sometimes much larger, and its trunk is often undivided for eighteen or twenty feet. There can be little doubt, from its great density and durability, that this is one of the finest species of oak that exists, surpassing even that for which Great Britain is so famous. Its cultivation has been tried in this country, without success; 'but could it be imported, it would be found admirably suited for the construction of lockgates, and other engineering works, for which hard and durable timber is required, and for which English or African oak is generally used.

The White Oak (Quercus alba,) is the species of which so much is imported into this country. It is known by the name of "American oak," but it is a very different and much inferior wood to the live oak of the United States which I have just described. It is also much more widely distributed, and occurs in much greater quantity, than the live oak. It is very common throughout the northern states, and in Canada, from whence it is exported to this country. It attains an elevation of seventy or eighty feet, with a diameter of six or seven feet. It is known by the whiteness of its bark, from which it derives its name, and from a few of its leaves remaining on the branches in a withered state throughout the winter. The wood is of a reddish colour, and in that respect is very similar to English oak. But it is generally acknowledged to be greatly inferior to it in strength and durability. It is very straight in the fibre, however, and can be got in pieces of great length and considerable scantling-properties which, for certain purposes, make it preferable to the British oak. It is much used in ship-building, and also for the transverse sleepers of railways. There are many other oaks in the United States, but the two I have mentioned are those most in use.

The pines are perhaps the next woods in importance to the oaks. The species of those are also very numerous, and I shall only mention one or two of the most important of them.

The White, or Weymouth Pine, (Pinus strobus,) is widely distributed both in the United States and in Canada, and is exported to Britain in great quantities from the latter country. It is the tallest tree of the American forest, having been known, according to Michaux, to attain the height of 180 feet. The wood has not much strength, but it is free from knots, and is easily wrought. It is very extensively employed in the erection

of bridges, particularly frame and lattice bridges, a construction peculiar to the United States, and very generally adopted in that country, which I have described in detail elsewhere. For this purpose it is well fitted, on account of its lightness and rigidity, and also because it is found to be less apt to warp or cast, on exposure to the atmosphere, than most other timbers of the country. It is much used for the interior fittings of houses, and for the masts and spars of vessels.

The Yellow Pine, (Pinus mitis or variabilis,) occurs only in the southern and middle states, and is not found in Canada, and therefore does not reach this country, the wood known by that name in Britain being the Pinus resinosa. It attains the height of 50 or 60 feet, with a diameter of 2 or 3 feet, and is the timber which the Americans employ in greatest quantity for the masts, yards, booms, and bowsprits of their vessels. A large quantity of it is annually consumed for this purpose in the building-yards of New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.

The Red Pine (Pinus resinosa) is the only other of the pine species that is much used, It occurs in great plenty in the northern and middle states, and in Canada, from whence it is exported in great quantity to this country, and it is known to us by the name of "American yellow pine." It attains the height of 70 or 80 feet, with a diameter of two feet, and is remarkable for the uniform size of its trunk for two-thirds of its height. Its name is derived from the redness of its bark. The wood, owing to the resinous matter it contains, is heavy; and is highly esteemed for naval architecture, more especially for decks of vessels, both in this country and in America.

The Locust (Robinia pseud-acacia), from the beauty of its foliage and the excellent qualities of its timber, is justly held in great esteem in America. It abounds in the middle states, and in some situations attains the height of seventy feet, with a diameter of four feet. The wood of the locust tree is of a greenish-yellow colour, marked with brown veins, not unlike the laburnum of this country. It is a close-grained, hard, and compact wood, and is of great strength. It is used, along with live oak and cedar, for the upper timbers of vessels, and is almost invariably used for treenails, to which it is well adapted. It is also employed in some parts of the country as transverse sleepers for railways. Its growth being chiefly confined to the United States, it is not imported into Britain. It is one of the very few trees that are planted by the Americans, and may be seen forming

⚫ Stevenson's Sketch of the Civil Engineering of North America. London: John Weale, 1838.

hedge-rows in the highly cultivated parts of Pennsylvania.

The Red Cedar (Juniperus Virginiana) is another valuable wood, the growth of which is confined to the United States. In situations where the soil is favourable, it grows to the height of 40 or 50 feet, with a diameter of 12 or 13 inches. This wood is of a bright red colour; it is odorous, compact, fine-grained, and very light, and is used, as already stated, in ship-building, along with live oak and locust, to compensate for their weight. It is considered one of the most durable woods of the United States, and being less affected by heat or moisture than almost any other, it is much employed for railway sleepers. I remember, in travelling on some of the railways, to have been most pleasantly regaled for miles together, with the aroma of the newly laid sleepers of this wood. It is now, however, becoming too scarce and valuable to be used for this purpose.

The White Cedar (Cupressus thyoides) and the Arbor Vitæ (Thuja occidentalis) are employed for sleepers and other purposes to which the red cedar is applied, but the latter is preferred when it can be obtained.

The only other tree which I shall notice is the Sugar Maple (Acer sacharinum), which occurs in great abundance in Canada and the northern states. It attains the height of 50 or 60 feet, and is from 12 to 18 inches in diameter. The wood of this tree is soft, and when exposed to moisture it soon decays. It is very close-grained, and when cut in certain directions is remarkably beautiful, its fibres, owing to their peculiar arrangement, producing a surface variegated with undulations and spots. It is also susceptible of a very high polish. These qualities tend to render it a valuable acquisition to the list of American woods for ornamental purposes, for which it is very generally employed, and is well known in this country by the name of "Bird's Eye Maple." The wood of the Red-flowering Maple (Acer rubrum) is also employed for ornamental purposes, and is generally known by the name of "Curled Maple." The cabins of almost all Americanbuilt vessels are lined with these woods, or with mahogany inlaid with them, and they are also much used for making the finer parts of the furniture of houses.

The property of the sugar maple, however, from which it derives its name, is of perhaps more importance, in a commercial point of view, than its use as timber. I allude to its property of distilling a rich sap, from which sugar is largely manufactured throughout the United States. From two to four pounds of sugar can be extracted annually from each tree without hurting its growth. I had an

AMERICAN TIMBER.

opportunity of making some inquiries regarding this simple process when on the banks of the river Ohio, where I saw it in progress. One or two holes are bored with an augur, at the height of about two feet from the ground, and into them wooden tubes, formed of the branch of some soft-hearted tree hollowed out, are inserted. The sap oozing from the maple flows through the tubes, and is collected in troughs. It is then boiled until a syrup is formed of sufficient strength to become solid on cooling, when it is run into moulds and is ready for use.

Such is a brief notice of some of the principal timbers of the United States, which, from their great abundance and variety, are suitable for almost every purpose connected with the arts, and thus serve in some degree to compensate for the want of stone, while at the same time they afford great advantages for the prosecution of every branch of carpentry, an art which has been brought to great perfection in that country. Many ingenious constructions have been devised to render timber applicable to all the purposes of civil architecture, and in no branch of engineering is this more strikingly exemplified than in bridge-building. Excepting a few small rubble arches of inconsiderable span, there is not a stone-bridge in the whole of the United States or Canada. But many wooden bridges have been constructed. Several of them, as is well known, are upwards of a mile and a quarter in length, and the celebrated Schuylkill Bridge at Philadelphia, which was burnt about two years ago, but was in existence when I visited the country, consisted of a single timber-arch of no less than 320 feet span. Canal locks and aqueducts, weirs, quays, breakwaters, and all manner of engineering works have there been erected, in which wood is the material chiefly employed; so that if we characterize Scotland as a stone, and England as a brick country, we may, notwithstanding its granite and marble, safely characterize the United States as a country of timber.

I shall only, in conclusion, very briefly allude to the appearance of the American forests, of which so much has been written and said, and on this subject I may remark, that it is quite possible to travel a great distance without meeting with a single tree of very large dimensions; but the traveller, I think, cannot fail very soon to discover that the average size of the trees is far above what is to be met with in this country. I measured many trees, varying from 15 to 20 feet in circumference, and the largest which I had an opportunity of actually measuring was a Button-wood tree (Platanus occidentalis) on the banks of Lake Erie, which I found to be twenty-one feet in circumference. I saw many trees, however, in travelling

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through the Americen forests, which evidently far exceeded that size, and which my situation, as a passenger in a public conveyance, prevented me from measuring.

M. Michaux, who has written on the forest trees of America, in speaking of their great size, states, that on a small island in the Ohio, fifteen miles above the river Muskingum, there was a button-wood tree, which, at five feet from the ground, measured 40 feet 4 inches in circumference. He mentions having met with a tree of the same species on the right bank of the Ohio, thirty-six miles above Marietta, whose base was swollen in an extraordinary manner; at four feet from the ground it measured 47 feet in circumference, giving a diameter of no less than 15 feet 8 inches; and another of nearly as great dimensions is mentioned by him as existing in Genessee; but these trees had perhaps been swollen to this enormous size from the effects of some disease. He also measured two trunks of white or Weymouth pine, on the river Kennebec, in a healthy state, one of which was 154 feet long, and 54 inches in diameter, and the other was 142 feet long, and 44 inches in diameter, at three feet from the ground. M. Michaux also measured a white pine which was 6 feet in diameter, and had reached probably the greatest height attained by the species, its top being 180 feet from the ground. It is difficult for an inhabitant of our island, without having seen the American forests to credit the statements which have been made by various authors, as to the existence of these gigantic trees of 180 feet in height (being about 40 feet higher than Melville's monument in St. Andrew-square, in Edinburgh;) but such trees undoubtedly do exist. Mr. James Macnab, of the Royal Botanic Garden, in a paper on the local distribution of different species of trees in the native forests of America,* mentions having measured numerous specimens of the Pinus strobus in Canada, which averaged 16 feet in circumference, and 160 feet in height; and one specimen, which had been blown down, and of which the top had been broken off, measured 88 feet in length, and even at this height was 18 inches in diameter.

The ascent of the sap in trees is a subject which has long occupied the attention of physiologists. Some difference of opinion, however, exists regarding it, and hitherto, it is believed, no very definite conclusions have been arrived at ;-and although not strictly connected with the subject of this paper, I may be excused for remarking, that the quantity of sap required to sustain such enormous trees as these I have been describing, and the source and nature of the power by which a

Agricultural Journal for 1835.

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LIST OF PATENTS GRANTED FOR SCOTLAND
BETWEEN THE 12TH OF NOVEMBER AND
THE 20TH OF DECEMBER, 1841.

John Annes, of Plymouth, painter, for a new and
improved method of making paint from materials
not before used for that purpose. Nov. 12, 1841.

William Palmer, of Sutton-street, Clerkenwell, Middlesex, manufacturer, for improvements in the manufacture of candles. (Being a communication from abroad, and partly by invention of his own.) November 17.

George Bent Ollivant and Adam Howard, of Manchester, mill-wrights, for certain improvements in cylindrical printing machinery, for printing calicoes and other fabrics, and the apparatus connected therewith, which is also applicable to other useful purposes. November 17.

John Steward, of Wolverhampton, Esq., for certain improvements in the construction of pianofortes. November 22.

George Lowe, of London, civil engineer, för improved methods of supplying gas under certain circumstances, and of improving its purity and illuminating power. November 24.

William Edward Newton, of 66, Chancery-lane, civil engineer, for certain improvements in the production of ammonia. (Being a communication from abroad.) December 1.

James Balderston, of Paisley, manufacturer, for certain improvements in machinery, or apparatus for doubling, twisting, twining, and finishing cotton and other fibrous substances. December 7.

James Colman, of Stoke, Holy Cross, county of Norfolk, starch-manufacturer, for improvements in the manufacture of starch. December 10.

Alexander Parkes, of Birmingham, for certain improvements in the production of works of art in metal by electric deposition. December 10.

William Irving, of Rotherhithe, gentleman, for improvements in the manufacture of bricks and tiles. December 10.

George Hickes, of Huddersfield, York, agent, for an improved machine for cleaning or freeing wool and other fibrous materials, of burs and other extraneous substancès. December 10.

Joseph Needham Taylor, of Devonport, a post captain in her Majesty's Navy, for a certain method or certain methods of abating or lessening the shock or force of the waves of the ocean, lakes, or rivers, and of reducing them to the comparatively harmless state known by the term, "broken water," and thereby preventing the injury done to, and increasing the durability of, breakwaters, mole-heads, piers, fortifications, lighthouses, docks, wharfs, landing-places, embankments, bridges, or pontoon bridges, and also of adding to the security and defence of harbours, road-steads, anchorages, and other places exposed to the violent action of the December 11.

waves.

Robert Holt, of Manchester, cotton spinner, and Robinson Jackson, of Manchester, engineer, for certain improvements in machinery or apparatus for the production of rotary motion for obtaining mechanical power, which said improvements are also applicable for raising and impelling fluids. December 11.

William Hill Darker, senior, and William Hill Darker, junior, both of Lambeth, engineers, and William Wood of Wilton, in the county of Wilts, carpet-manufacturer, for certain improvements in looms for weaving. December 14.

Archibald Templeton, of Lancaster, silk-spinner, for a new or improved method of preparing for spinning silk and other fibrous materials. cember 16.

De

James Colley March, of Barnstaple, surgeon, for certain improved means of producing heat from the combustion of certain kinds of fuel. Dec. 16.

Christopher Dumont, of Mentz, but now residing in Mark-lane, London, gentleman, for improvements in the manufacture of metallic letters figures, and other devices. (Being a communication from abroad.) December 16.

Morris West Ruthven, of Rotherham, engineer, for a new mode of encreasing the power of certain media when acted upon by rotary fans or other similar apparatus. December 16.

Henry Augustus Wells, of Regent-street, gentleman, for improvements in machinery for driving piles. (Being a communication from abroad.) December 17.

Henry Booth, of Liverpool, Esq., for improvements in the method of propelling vessels through water. December 17.

John Hale, of Breezes Hill, Ratcliff Highway, sugar-refiner, for improvements in the construction of boilers for generating steam, and in the application of steam to mechanical power. December 17.

Henry Browne, of Codnor Park Iron Works, Derby, iron manufacturer, for improvements in the manufacture of steel. December 18.

William Newton, of 66, Chancery-lane, civil engineer, for certain improvements in engines to be worked by gas, vapour, or steam. (Being a communication from abroad) December 20.

LIST OF PATENTS FOR IRELAND GRANTED
IN NOVEMBER, 1841.

W. E. Newton, for certain improvements in the manufacture of fuel.

L. Kortwright, for certain improvements in treating and preparing the substance commonly called whalebone, and the fins, and such like other parts of whales, and rendering the same fit for various commercial and useful purposes.

R. L. Sturtevant, for certain improvements in the manufacture of soap.

M. J. Roberts and W. Brown, for certain improvements in the process of dyeing various matters, whether the raw material of wool, silk, flax, hemp, cotton, or other similar fibrous substances; or the same substances in any stage of manufacture; and in the preparation of pigments, or painters' colours.

W. Scamp, for an application of machinery to steam-vessels for the removal of sand, mud, soil, and other matters, from the sen, rivers, docks, harbours, and other bodies of waters.

Intending Patentees may be supplied gratis with Instructions, containing every particular necessary for their safe guidance, by application (post-paid) to Messrs. J. C. Robertson and Co., 166, Fleet-street, by whom is kept the only COMPLETE REGISTRY OF PATENTS EXTANT, (from 1617 to the present time;) Patents, both British and Foreign, solicited. Specifications prepared or revised, and all other Patent business transacted.

LONDON: Edited, Printed, and Published by J. C. Robertson, at the Mechanics' Magazine Office,
No. 166, Fleet-street.-Sold by W. and A. Galignani, Rue Vivienne, Paris;
Machiu and Co., Dublin; and W. C. Campbell and Co., Hamburgh,

Mechanics' Magazine,

MUSEUM, REGISTER, JOURNAL, AND GAZETTE.

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