Although Mr. Kyan invented his process in 1832, Sir Humphrey Davy had previously used and recommended to the Admiralty, and Navy Board, a weak solution of the same thing to be used as a wash where rot made its appearance: on giving his opinion upon Mr. Lukin’s process, that eminent chemist observed, “that he had found corrosive sublimate highly antiseptic, and preservative of animal and vegetable substances, and therefore recommended rubbing the surface of timber with a solution of it.” In 1821 Mr. Knowles, of the Navy Office, referred to the use of corrosive sublimate for timber. In fact, it was used in 1705, in Provence (France), for preserving wood from beetles. Kyan, however, was the first to apply it to any extent. In the years 1833 to 1836, at the Arsenal, Woolwich, experiments were instituted, having for their object the establishing, or otherwise, the claims of Kyan’s system; the results of which were of a satisfactory nature. Dr. Faraday has stated that the combination of the materials used was not simply mechanical but chemical; and Captain Alderson, C.E., having experimented upon some specimens of ash and Christiana deal, found that the rigidity of the timber was enhanced, but its strength was in some measure impaired; its specific gravity being also in some degree diminished.[8] Kyan’s process is said by some to render the wood brittle. Mr. Kyan considered that the commencement of rot might be stopped or prevented by the application of corrosive sublimate, in consequence of the chemical combination which takes place between the corrosive sublimate and those albuminous particles which Berzelius and others of the highest authority consider to exist in and form the essence of wood; which, being the first parts to run to decay, cause others to decay with them. By seasoning timber in the ordinary way, the destructive principle is dried, and under common circumstances rendered inert. But when the timber is afterwards exposed to great moisture, &c. (the fermentative principle being soluble when merely dried), it will sometimes be again called into action. Kyan’s process is said not only altogether to destroy this principle and render it inert, but, by making it solid and perfectly insoluble, to remove it from the action of moisture altogether. It thus loses its hygrometric properties, and, therefore, prepared or patent seasoned timber is not liable to those changes of atmosphere which affect that which is seasoned in the common way. All woods, including mahogany and the finest and most expensive wood, may be seasoned by Kyan’s process in a very short space of time, instead of the months required by the ordinary methods. The reader will find a great deal about Kyan’s system in the ‘Quarterly Review,’ April, 1833; and about proposals for using chloride of mercury for wood, ‘Memoirs of the Academy of Dijon,’ 1767; ‘Bull. des Sciences teen.,’ v. ii., 1824, Paris; and ‘Bull. de Pharm.,’ v. 6, 1814, Paris.