twist. When first taken from the swamp the long-immersed logs are very
much heavier than water, but they dry with great rapidity. A cypress
log from the Mississippi Delta, which two men could barely handle at
the time it was taken out some years ago, has dried out so much since
then that to-day one man can lift it with ease. White cedar telegraph
poles are said to remain floating in the water of the Great Lakes
sometimes for several years before they are set in lines and to last
better than freshly cut poles.

It is very probable that immersion for long periods in water does
materially hasten subsequent seasoning. The tannins, resins,
albuminous materials, etc., which are deposited in the cell walls of
the fibres of green wood, and which prevent rapid evaporation of the
water, undergo changes when under water, probably due to the action of
bacteria which live without air, and in the course of time many of
these substances are leached out of the wood. The cells thereby become
more and more permeable to water, and when the wood is finally brought
into the air the water escapes very rapidly and very evenly.
Herzenstein's statement that wood prepared by immersion and subsequent
drying will absorb more preservative, and that with greater rapidity,
is certainly borne out by experience in the United States.

It is sometimes claimed that all seasoning preparatory to treatment
with a substance like tar oil might be done away with by putting the
green wood into a cylinder with the oil and heating to 225 degrees
Fahrenheit, thus driving the water off in the form of steam, after
which the tar oil would readily penetrate into the wood. This is the
basis of the so-called "Curtiss process" of timber treatment. Without
going into any discussion of this method of creosoting, it may be said
that the same objection made for steaming holds here. In order to get
a temperature of 212 degrees Fahrenheit in the center of the treated
wood, the outside temperature would have to be raised so high that the
strength of the wood might be seriously injured.

A company on the Pacific coast which treats red fir piling asserts
that it avoids this danger by leaving the green timber in the tar oil
at a temperature which never exceeds 225 degrees Fahrenheit for from
five to twelve hours, until there is no further evidence of water
vapor coming out of the wood. The tar oil is then run out, and a
vacuum is created for about an hour, after which the oil is