Page:Timber and Timber Trees, Native and Foreign.djvu/21

 INTRODUCTION.

properties and characteristic qualities of the timber available for works of construction are so numerous and important, and yet so little understood generally, that I am induced by the solicitations of many friends to give, in these pages, all the information respecting them which I have been able to collect. This collection has been made during a long course of practice in the working of forests, and in the employment of a great variety of woods, and I am not without hope that the results will be of service to many who are engaged in carpentry, shipbuilding, and engineering.

To the students of these branches of art, it will be my aim to make the work especially useful, as I propose to treat, not only of the timber known to, and dealt with in commerce, but to extend my observations to a few others which, for the most part, are equally valuable, although, at present, they are scarcely known beyond the localities in which they grow. I propose also to treat of the defects most frequently met with in timber