Page:Timber and Timber Trees, Native and Foreign.djvu/118

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98
TIMBER AND TIMBER TREES.
[CHAP.

moderate degree of hardness and strength, but with nothing in its appearance to recommend it to favourable notice. The private ship-builders therefore declined to use it, and as upon trial it was found unsuitable for the royal dockyards, none has of late been imported.

Table XXXVI.— Dutch or Rhenish Oak.
Transverse Experiments.
Number
of the
specimen.
Deflections. Total
weight
required
to break
each
piece.
Specific
gravity
Weight
reduced
to
specific
gravity
1000.
Weight
required
to break
1 square
inch.
With the
apparatus
weighing
390 lbs.
After the
weight
was
removed.
At
the crisis
of
breaking.
  Inches. Inch. Inches. lbs.     lbs.
1 3.50 .250 5.250 658.0 1035 635 164.50
2 4.00 .250 6.650 650.0 1100 650 162.50
3 3.50 .300 6.750 625.0 1020 612 56.25
4 3.50 .350 7.150 630.0 940 670 57.50
5 3.25 .250 8.000 710.0 1082 656 177.50
6 3.50 .250 6.500 680.0 1080 630 170.00
Total 21.25 1.65 40.30 3953 6257 3853 988.25
Average 3.54 .275 6.716 658.8 1043 642 164.71
E = 276550.S = 1729.

Remarks.—Each piece broke with a moderate length of fracture.

Oak timber has also been imported from Spain in considerable quantities, for ship-building and other purposes. The logs were generally small, or, at the best, of only medium dimensions, curved or crooked at the butt end, and tapering rather quickly towards the top. The wood of the Spanish Oak is of a dark brown colour, plain and even in its grain, porous, softer than most other Oaks, and liable to excessive shrinkage in seasoning.