240 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
unseasoned timber and lack of ventilation, for doubtless the bad
reputation of foreign timber was due mainly to improper seasoning,
and lack of ventilation was due to faulty construction. Foreign
timber was often floated down rivers and then immediately
loaded into the confined holds of timber ships, an ideal arrange-
ment for fungal infection; the logs were sometimes covered
with fruit-bodies before they reached the dockyards. English
timber was neither wetted nor stored in this way. Moreover,
foreign timber as a rule was used only in times of emergency
when there was no opportunity for the requisite period of
seasoning and, furthermore, was employed only for the repairs
of old ships. When, therefore, there was the inevitable
destruction the blame was attributed almost invariably to the
use of this timber.
Several of the early explorers had suggested that naval
timber might be acquired in the New World. During the first
Dutch war ships were sent for masts and by 1670 there was a
regular trade, later carried on by specially built mast ships
which served also as primitive transatlantic liners. The idea
of the time seems generally to have been that if the mast trade
were properly developed it would counteract the unfavourable
balance of trade with the Baltic and would divert the colonists
from the manufacture of woollen goods. A cargo of various
types of American ship-timber was sent to Deptford in 1696,
but was most unfavourably reported on, as was also a further
cargo four years later ; it was not American timber that was
desired, but masts. However, there was a good deal of ship-
building in America both for the colonists' own use and for sale
to England, with a corresponding ease of the timber demands
here. After the accession of William and Mary there were
several attempts to regularise the felling : thus in Anne's reign
there was an Act passed "for the Preservation of White and
"other Pine trees growing in Her Majesty's Colonies . . .
"for the masting of Her Majesties Navy."
"No Person or Persons within the said Colonies of New-Hampshire,
"the Massachusets-Bay, and Province of Main, Rhode-Island, and
"Providence-Plantation, the Narragenset Country, or Kings Pro-
"vince, Connecticut in New-England, and New-York, and New-
Jersey, or any of them, do or shall presume to Cut, Fell, or Destroy
"any White or other sort of Pine-Tree fit for Masts, not being the
"Property of any private Person, such Tree being the Growth of