Boiling and steaming are likewise employed for softening woods, to facilitate the cutting as well as bending of them. Thus, in Taylor’s patent machines for making casks, the blocks intended for the staves are cut out of white Canada oak to the size of 30 inches by 5 inches and smaller. They are well steamed, and then sliced into pieces ½ inch or ⅝ inch thick, at the rate of 200 in each minute, by a process far more rapid and economical than sawing; the instrument being a revolving iron plate of 12 feet diameter, with two radial knives arranged somewhat like the irons of an ordinary plane or spokeshave. How far steaming or boiling affects the durability of timber has not been satisfactorily ascertained; but it is said that the planks of a ship near the bows, which are bent by steaming, have never been observed to be affected with dry rot. With respect to boiling, Du Hamel’s opinion is not favourable as to its adding to the durability of timber; for when a piece of dry wood was immersed in boiling water, and afterwards dried in a stove, it not only lost the water it had imbibed, but also a part of its substance; and when the experiment was repeated with the same piece of wood, it lost more of its substance the second time than it did the first. Tredgold--no mean authority--considers that “boiled or steamed timber shrinks less, and stands better than that which is naturally seasoned.” Barlow is of opinion that “the seasoning goes on more rapidly after the piece is steamed than when boiled.” At the close of the Crimean and Baltic campaigns the port of Cherbourg was almost completely cleared of staves sufficiently seasoned for making casks. The engineer at the head of the coopering department determined to boil in fresh water the newly-cut staves, and compare the time of their seasoning with that of other staves cut from the same forests, but not prepared; and the result was that after four or five months’ exposure to the atmosphere, the boiled staves were perfectly fit for working up, while to bring the others to the same point fifteen months were barely sufficient. Steaming is understood to prevent dry rot. No doubt boiling and steaming partly remove the ferment spores, but _may not_ destroy the vitality of those remaining. For, according to Milne-Edwards, on ‘Spontaneous Generation.’ he has seen tardigrades resist the prolonged action of a temperature of 248° Fahr., and has known them to survive a temperature of 284° Fahr. That low forms of vegetation are fully as tenacious of life cannot be doubted. Boiling and steaming also coagulate the albumen at 140° Fahr. Although coagulated albumen is insoluble in water, the water solution is by this heating process sealed up in the wood, and the cohesion of the latter is said to be diminished.