Page:Timber and Timber Trees, Native and Foreign.djvu/44

24 had always been a deficiency of water, the extensive planting of trees has remedied the defect.

It would seem that the fine trees found in forests and elsewhere, whether it be natural to them to have straight stems or curved ones, have not always been so fair looking or so symmetrically shaped as we find them

when of an age and size fit for felling, but that in early life they have not unfrequently assumed a wavy, rambling, or, it may be, unsightly appearance, which was only improved upon as they attained to greater strength and approached maturity. This supposition will, I think, be readily allowed by anyone who has passed through a copse, or maiden forest, in search of a straight sapling for a walking-stick, and experienced the difficulty of finding one suitable for the purpose.

A short time since a piece of Oak timber of moderate dimensions came under my notice which fully illustrated this fact, as it had sufficient of its wavy and rambling form laid open, while under conversion for employment in ship-building, to satisfy the most sceptical that it could have had little of beauty to recommend it to notice during the first thirty years of its growth; while the large straight block of timber which encased it showed that later in life it had assumed a much fairer form, and was even considered, when