266 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
lecture "On the practical prevention of dry rot in timber"
to the Royal Institution. A Royal Commission was set up to
consider the process in 1835 when experiments carried out in
the "fungus pit"19 at Woolwich were described. The method
proved satisfactory in comparatively dry situations but in
water, and particularly in sea water, it appears to have failed
completely, as when tried out on a large scale in the navy.
The present account refers only to the Navy. Dry rot was
apparently not so prevalent n merchantmen, partly because
of the beneficial effect of loading and unloading on ventilation.
It was probably owing to dry rot that the Speedwell was unable
to accompany the Mayflower; it was "owing to the decayed
state of the ship" that Captain Flinders left the Investigator to
return to England.
It was at this time that the necessity for preserving railway
sleepers began to come to the fore. The oils of coal tar—those
heavier than water being called kreosot and those lighter
eupion—soon became regarded as the best antiseptic for treating
timber, the practical introduction dating from 1838.
The Navy Board till its replacement in 1832 and the Ad-
miralty officials were generally open to suggestions but the
essential point of using only properly seasoned wood was never
really grasped. The death-knell of wooden war ships was not
recognised by the naval authorities—even a month before the
action of Hampton Roads Parliament voted half a million for
timber, in addition to over a million in 1860, and a quarter of
a million in 1861—and in 1859 there was an abnormal building
programme with the usual use of unseasoned wood.
It is more than likely that this would have led to the same
destruction of ships as always in the past. Indeed in 1860
there was some concern about dry rot for Berkeley examined
the gun-boats Prince Regent at Portsmouth and Arethusa and
Carolina at Chatham. He found Xylostroma giganteum and
Polyporus hybridus but no Merulius lacrymans, Thelephora
(Coniophora) puteana "or of the one or two allied species which
are very destructive in domestic structure"—but every acces-
sible part of the timber had been dubbed. The first of the
19 This "had been a capstan-hole; a quantity of carbonic gas was generated in it ; it had
a lid covered with litter ; was seven or eight feet deep; was lined with wood in a state of decay
and had a great deal of fungus on it when selected for trying timber" by Knowles in 1814 or
1815.