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Show 284 MODERN OAJt. the severest test ; for the decay extended, no~ only to the entire portion of the part that was m thf} (]'round but a!so to a cross piece, which was nearly two fe~t below the surface, and which, of course·1 had no weather line, from which its dec~y c~uld originate. Some pieces of American. white pme, which is considered to be the worst t!mber of the whole pine tribe were put down for the purp?se of keeping the dur;ble "heart of oak'.' stea~y, t1ll the earth should be consolidated about It. ~hen tak~n up these were entire and merely wet, wh1le the sa1d he~rt of oak was completely. gone ~ But that was not the case with oa~ of former owth; those oak posts a~d b~ams, ~n the earth fnd out of it, in aU sorts of s1tuatwns ·~1th regard to damp confined air and all other cucun1stances which are usually charged as being th~ canses of rot in the modern oaks. There are oM p1les drawn out of foundations in the water, where they must have been for upwards of five hundred years ; and th.o?gh the sap-wood of them is in a state of decomposition, and the heart champs when too suddenly exposed to· the drought, yet the ~eart of those, properly treated, is as sound as when It was put down. ln the pea~bogs, and other submerged forests, ~oo, there. IS abundance of oak ; and if care be taken in the drymg of it, that oak is as hard and durable, at the same time that it is as black, as ebony. But our modern oak will not last as many years, in some instances not as many ~onth.s, as the ?ld oak lasted centuries. The specimen upon which the above experiment was made was of chosen oak, picked in the royal forest, and, therefore, presuma~ ble to have been the very best that could be P!ocured, and yet, had it not been protected by t~e. pu~e beam in which it was cased up, the probability IS 1 that it would not have lasted any lon~er in its first situation than it did in its last. ~o build_ h~mses of such oak is mockery, to build sh1os of 1t lS crue~ . RO.TS. 285 for while they have the external appearance of sour:dness, they may go to pieces with the least stram, a!ld bury all on boar_d in the deep. Only that the fungt are not of the nght species, such timber would answer the purpose of t~e mushroom-grower far better than t~at of the. bmlder or the ship-carp~ nter ; for the timbers go mto their places loaded ) With r_nushr~>Om spawn, and, in fact, progress to the ) stat~ m which that generates; and so, in as far as 1 oak 1s concerned in their structure, we have mush-room ho~ses and mushroom ships. What 1.s t~e <:ause 1 Why should it be that ' \ ··en nav1gat10n ts every day increasing in extent and value, the grand engine of navigation should be deteriorating every day! "The dry ro.t," is he answer. Well, be it so: what is the dry rot 1 DRY ROT. (Xylostroma Giganteum.) ·~ Xylostro:na giganteum, which grows in the timber, hke a t~ICk bro?fl pate~ of dull yellow leather, or serpula ~zstru.ens m other mstances, which is smaller, redder m. the colour, and whitish at the edge ; but that ,l,ast ts as ofte~ found up<;>n other timber as upon oak. W e~l, that. 1s not a pomt worthy of much dispu; e ; the hmb~r 1~ destr<;>y~d, and, generally speak~ mo, these are fun~p; but 1t Is just about as sensible w call those fungi "dry rot," as it would be to call |
