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"As to me,

public meeting, and which he had opened to this effect. gentlemen, I trust I have some title to give my opinions freely. Would you know whence my title is derived? I challenge any man amongst you to inquire! If he ask my birth,-its genealogy may dispute with kings! If my wealth,-it is all for which I have time to hold out my hand! If my talents-No!-of those, gentlemen, I leave you to judge for yourselves!"'-vol. iii. p. 169-174.

We have already exceeded our limits, and must conclude with repeating our wish that it were possible to persuade Madame d'Arblay to separate, even now, her own from her father's Memoirs to give us them as he wrote them, or at least as much of what he wrote as she might judge proper; and to condense and simplify into a couple of interesting (and interesting they would be) volumes, her own story and her contemporaneous notes and bona fide recollections of that brilliant society in which she moved, from 1778 to 1794. We lay some stress on the words bonâ fide, not as imputing to Madame d'Arblay the slightest intention to deceive, but because we think that we see in almost every page abundant proof, that the habit of novel-writing has led her to colour and, as she may suppose, embellish her anecdotes with sonorous epithets and factitious details, which, however, we venture to assure her, not only blunt their effect, but discredit their authority.

To conclude: we hope it will be observed that our strictures have been confined to Madame d'Arblay's errors in point of style and arrangement;—we have none other to reproach her with ;her book evinces the best feelings-the best principles-she is amiable and respectable-we may smile at her foibles, but we willingly admit that they always lean to virtue's side,'—and she will (her later works happily forgotten) go down to posterity as an exemplary woman in private life; as the author of Evelina and Cecilia; as honoured for her own unassisted merits with the patronage and protection of King George III. and his admirable Queen, and as the friend and favourite of Mr. Burke and of Dr. Johnson.

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ART. VI. 1. On Naval Timber and Arboriculture; with Critical Notes. By Patrick Matthew. 8vo. London. 1830. 2. Practical Remarks on Building and Equipping Ships of War. By A. W. Schomberg, Esq., Rear Admiral of the Blue. 8vo. London. 1832.

3. Calculations relating to the Equipment of Ships. By John Edye. 4to. London. 1833.

THE author of the first of these works introduces one of the most important branches of his subject in these terms:

• We

"We greatly wonder that something efficacious has not been done by our Navy Board in regard to Dry Rot; and consider that a rotprevention-officer or wood-physician should be appointed to each vessel of war, from the time her first timber is laid down, to be made accountable if rot to any extent should ever occur; and that this officer should be regularly bred to his profession. Perhaps it might be as well to endow several professors' chairs at the universities, to follow out and lecture on this science.'

We do not know of what wood Mr. Matthew would recommend these chairs to be formed; but although a Mercury may be made ex quovis ligno, we do not think any skill will ever convert him either into a Rot-prevention officer or a Wood-physician. His discovery, in short, is neither more nor less than the old prescription, to rub naval timbers with lime: and after a variety of long sentences and solemn calculations, he is himself obliged to close the chapter with a simple statement, which at one touch decomposes his whole doctrine, as effectually as ever a rot-doctor's prepared plank was converted into the semblance of wet leather by a three months' sojourn in the fungus pit' at Woolwich :

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It is necessary,' he candidly says, 'to mention, that though lime, when timber is so dry as to be liable to corruption by insects or dry rot, is, by destroying life and increasing the dryness, preventive of this corruption-yet lime, in contact with timber for a considerable time in moist air, from its great attraction for water, draws so much moisture from the air as to become wet mortar or pulp, which, moistening the timber, promotes its decay by the moist rot.'-p. 162.

Mr. Matthew is, we do not doubt, a skilful planter; and, though his Critical Notes' are pert nonsense, his book, on the whole, is not a bad one;-but it will be evident, before we conclude this paper, that he has never had even a glimpse of the rationale of what is called dry rot in timber. In the mean time let it be observed, that, in point of fact, all rot, whether in animal or vegetable substances, in whatever dust or snuff it may end, does and must begin with moisture.

Since this subject was last treated at any length in this Journal (vol. xxx., p. 216,) a variety of authors have put forth books on it: but the only one of these that has acquired or merited much repu tation is the very able one of Mr. Knowles ;* and even he does not leave the matter in so advanced a state as the admirable article Dry Rot in the supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica. To that lucid and succinct paper we may refer our readers for a satisfactory view of the most interesting experiments and philosophic opinions that had been made public respecting this subject down to 1824;

* An Inquiry into the Means which have been taken to preserve the British Navy from the earliest to the present Times. By John Knowles, Secretary to the Committee of Surveyors of his Majesty's Navy. 4to.

and

and proceed to detail the results of some more recent researches― which several of the most eminent chemists of the time already speak of as having at length settled the whole question-in other words, led to the discovery of a means of preventing this disease in timber, at once universally applicable, cheap of cost, and unattended with any countervailing disadvantages to the health of man. We shall not be so rash as to pronounce any fixed judgment, while his majesty's Board of Admiralty see reason to continue their trials of the proposed panacea; for we can have no doubt that they will speak out as soon as an honest sense of duty to the public will permit them to do so.* But we think the progress already made in their cautious line of experiment so considerable, that we shall be doing a service by directing general attention to the business, and stimulating private ship-builders, architects, and proprietors of woodland, to institute experiments of their own in various parts of the country, the results of which, if properly observed and recorded, may be of extreme value not only to themselves but to the community.

At the beginning of this century one writer maintained that fungous plants were the causes of dry rot; another answered him by exhibiting gigantic ravages of dry rot, where there were no fungi whatever; and, not to weary our readers with needless repetitions, botanists and chemists were at length content to acquiesce in old Pliny's doctrine, that this species of disease in timber originates simply in the putrefaction of the vegetable juices of the wood, and may develope itself in the growth of fungi or otherwise, without being either less or more fatal in its effects. Then came great controversies as to these vegetable juices themselves :-some holding, that if the shipwright chipped off all the outer wood or alburnum, in which the juices are far more copious than in the heartwood, the danger would be at least reduced to a trifle ;-while others (of whom Buonaparte approved). were for limiting the felling of timber to the three months of winter proper; -and those who doubted the efficacy of either of these plansbelieving that dry rot begins with the heartwood under one set of circumstances, as infallibly as with the alburnum under another, and that the vegetable juices are by no means entirely out of the trunk or branches either, even in the prime of January-argued in favour each of his own scheme for dealing with the juices in the felled timber ;-one recommending us to attack them by desiccation; a second by dissolution in running water; a third by anti

* Among the documents printed by Mr. Kyan is a very distinct report in his favour, drawn up, after a trial of three years, by Sir Robert Sepping: and probably the Board's attention to the subject has been in some degree interrupted, in consequence of Sir Robert's retirement from the public service, which occurred shortly after his signature was affixed to that certificate.

septics,

septics, such as steeping in brine; a fourth by the exhibition of oleaginous substances to prevent the access of the atmospheric air, &c.-as to all which views and prescriptions see copious details in the article of the Encyclopædia above referred to.

There can be no doubt as to the partial efficacy of all these plans; but experience has shown, that no one of them can be, in all circumstances, relied on practically as a panacea for dry rot. The process of desiccation by exposure to air and wind is the only one of them that has been largely adopted in our public establishments; but in innumerable instances its failure has been lamentably and even early apparent. The statements of Mr. Knowles on this head are precise and irrefragable. In every dockyard, (he says,) in spite of the best care and arrangement, it has often been the lot of the shipwright to find, that while the external parts of the log, exposed to a free current of air, remained without spot or blemish, the work of corruption had begun in the interior, to which the air could not penetrate with sufficient power. Whole stacks of timber would be found healthy for a certain number of inches inwards, but bored through at the centre with a creeping and spreading sore, from the fermentation of the juices compressed in the of oak.'* Exactly the same has been the result of multifarious, though less extensive, experiments with oleaginous substances. None of them penetrate deep enough to protect the heartwood, when it is exposed to the vicissitudes of heat and cold, moist and dry atmospheres. Nor has the scheme of dissolving the vegetable juices, so as to destroy their vitality, by steeping the timber in water, been able to bear the test on any large scale. In the case of such a customer as the navy, its mere tediousness and consequent expense, even were it proved to be perfectly effective, would be an insurmountable objection. As to the steeping in brine, we need only refer to some authorities quoted in this Journal on a

*We quote one of the instances attested by Mr. Knowles:- In the middle of the year 1814 a stack of timber was formed in Deptford yard, according to a plan recommended by Mr. Sowerby, and this was carried on under his inspection. The method of forming the pile was as follows:-There were sixteen piers formed of brick, with stone caps placed in four rows, upon pavement, lying at an angle of inclination to carry off the rain-water: these were three feet six inches in height, and ten feet asunder. On each pier two pigs of iron ballast were laid, which being six inches square and two feet ten inches long, made the height of the supports four feet. On these, pieces of sided oak timber were laid as skids, and other pieces crossed them, with a considerable separation between each, and by this manner of stowage the pile was raised several tiers. The timber remained in this state till June 1820, a period of five years, when it was unstacked for use; although it was a little rent, it had externally a fine and sound appearance, but the whole was found to be more or less internally decayed, except in those parts where the timber had crossed; the heart of the several pieces resembled the soft spongy sap-wood, or, as it is sometimes called, touchwood, but there was no appearance of fungus either externally or internally.'

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former occasion, and which prove, beyond cavil, that the attraction for moisture which deliquescent salts possess, would render a vessel built of timber thus dealt with a complete hygrometer,that the interior would be in a dripping state, which would not only expose the ship to destruction by wet rot, but be incalculably dangerous to the health of the ship's company, and lastly, that the iron work would be rapidly corroded.

Regarding, as far as we can perceive, the growth of fungi as the primary evil to be guarded against, the late illustrious philosopher, Sir Humphry Davy, threw out, in one of his early lectures at the Royal Institution, a hint that a solution of the deutochloride of mercury, which he had tried with success as a means of preserving insects, might perhaps be found available on a larger scale, and especially in the case of vegetable substances; but no experiments appear to have followed this suggestion, chiefly, we believe, because Davy himself expressed, shortly afterwards, a suspicion that, if such experiments were ever so successful, a poisonous atmosphere might be generated within a ship, or even a dwelling-house, constructed of timbers which had been saturated with such a preparation.* The hint, in short, had the fate of so many now famous articles in the Marquis of Worcester's 'Century of Inventions :'-it found a place in every successive treatise on dry rot; but no one thought of putting it to the test; until a distiller of the city of London, who had never, it is said, heard of Davy's obiter dictum, in the course of some experiments on vegetable infusions, became so much impressed with the virtues of the very application which Davy had pointed out, that he was induced to begin a series of experiments as to wood also ;and hence the novel aspect under which the whole subject of dry rot at this moment presents itself.

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The theory of this ingenious person, in as far as we can gather it from his specification, and some printed documents now before us, and we must add from a very clever lecture lately delivered by Mr. Faraday, may be considered as founded on the great truth thus succinctly stated by Fourcroy: The aim of nature in exciting fermentation is to render more simple the compounds formed by vegetation and animalization, and to employ these in new combinations.' Mr. Knowles, in commenting on Fourcroy's dictum, says,

Thus is the great law of nature fulfilled, that the death of one body shall give life to others. When the animal dies, and fermentation takes place, flies deposit their eggs, maggots are formed, and the fleshy parts are destroyed; when the vegetable hody falls, it is eaten

This suspicion, we believe, occurred to Sir Humphry Davy, and also to Mr. Faraday, when they were consulted by Earl Spencer on the appearance of dry rot in his Lordship's magnificent library at Althorp.

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