Timber

Abstract

THIS Popular manual undoubedly contains interesting and miscellaneous information about the uses, preservation, and strength of timbers. The author, who is an engineer, occasionally refers, to useful matter in engineering publications, and has compiled extensively from the reports of the forest officers of the various British colonies and of the United States. It is unfortunate, however, that he has attempted to write a general treatise. He is confessedly ignorant of botany; and his account of the structure and origin of the numerous species dealt with is usually meagre and defective, and in many instances almost puerile. His frequent descriptions of trees in the living state are out of place in a small manual, the subject of which is timber, and not forestry. The same remark applies to many of the illustrations, which are irrelevant. Hackneyed pictures of the common oak, beech, larch, &c., growing in the isolated state, only serve to show (but Mr. Baterden and his publisher are unaware of this) how trees ought not to be grown, if they are to be regarded as producers of timber of proper shape and quality.

Timber.

By J. R. Baterden. Pp. ix + 351. (London: Archibald Constable and Co., Ltd., 1908.) Price 6s. net.