In the construction of buildings, larch is valuable only for the grosser parts, as beams, lintels, joists, couples. For the finer boarded part, it is so much disposed to warp, and so difficult to be worked, as generally to preclude use. It is, however, asserted that if larch be seasoned by standing two years with the bark stripped from the bole before being cut down, that the timber becomes manageable for finer house work. Although larch timber be extremely durable in exposed situation, yet it yields to the depredations of insects fully as soon as any pine timber in close houses. We have proof of it in house-furniture about 50 years old, but it is considerably moth-eaten by apparently a smaller insect than common. Larch stools also disappear in forests sooner than the stools of Scots fir, being eaten by a species of beetle; and the sea-worm devours larch in preference to almost any other wood. We have looked over some experiments conducted at Woolwich, in trial of the comparative strength of larch and other fir timber, where the larch is stated inferior to Riga and Dantzic fir, Pitch pine, {104} and even Yellow pine. Larch, in the districts of Scotland where it is grown and much in use, is universally allowed to be considerably stronger than other fir; and the sawyers of it have one-fourth more pay per stated measure. We, ourselves, have had considerable experience of the strength of larch applied to many purposes, and have found it in general much superior in strength to other fir. We have known a crooked topmast of this timber, to which the sailors bore a grudge, defy their utmost ingenuity to get carried away. We once had four double horse-carts, made (excepting the wheels) of peeled young larch of rather slow growth, for the carriage of large stones; these, by mistake, were made very slight, so light, that, without the wheels, a man could have carried one of them away. When we saw the first loading of stones nearly a ton weight each, two in each cart, and the timber yielding and creaking like a willow-basket, we did not expect they would have supported the weight and jostlings of a rugged road many yards; yet they withstood this coarse employment for a long time. The timber of larch near the top of the tree is, however, very inferior and deficient in toughness; and it is not improbable that the experiments above alluded to at Woolwich had been made with larch {105} timber deficient in strength from being a top. White larch has comparatively smaller and more numerous branches than any other of the Coniferæ; consequently the timber is freer of large knots, and has more equable strength, as well in small spars as when large and cut out into joists and beams, provided the timber be not too far up the tree. _Larch, however, compared with pines and firs, has the timber much stronger when young, and several inches or below a foot in diameter, than when old and large_: this may partly be owing to its deficiency in resinous deposit.