There are many examples on record of serious losses of liquors from leakage caused by the beetles boring through the staves and heads of the barrels and casks in cellars and storerooms. The condition, in addition to the moisture of the wood, which is favorable for the presence of the beetles, is proximity to their breeding places, such as the trunks and stumps of recently felled or dying oak, maple, and other hardwood or deciduous trees; lumber yards, sawmills, freshly-cut cordwood, from living or dead trees, and forests of hardwood timber. Under such conditions the beetles occur in great numbers, and if the storerooms and cellars in which the barrels are kept stored are damp, poorly ventilated, and readily accessible to them, serious injury is almost certain to follow. SECTION VI WATER IN WOOD DISTRIBUTION OF WATER IN WOOD Local Distribution of Water in Wood As seasoning means essentially the more or less rapid evaporation of water from wood, it will be necessary to discuss at the very outset where water is found in wood, and its local seasonal distribution in a tree. Water may occur in wood in three conditions: (1) It forms the greater part (over 90 per cent) of the protoplasmic contents of the living cells; (2) it saturates the walls of all cells; and (3) it entirely or at least partly fills the cavities of the lifeless cells, fibres, and vessels. In the sapwood of pine it occurs in all three forms; in the heartwood only in the second form, it merely saturates the walls. Of 100 pounds of water associated with 100 pounds of dry wood substance taken from 200 pounds of fresh sapwood of white pine, about 35 pounds are needed to saturate the cell walls, less than 5 pounds are contained in the living cells, and the remaining 60 pounds partly fill the cavities of the wood fibres. This latter forms the sap as ordinarily understood. The wood next to the bark contains the most water. In the species which do not form heartwood, the decrease toward the pith is gradual, but where heartwood is formed the change from a more moist to a drier condition is usually quite abrupt at the sapwood limit. In long-leaf pine, the wood of the outer one inch of a disk may contain 50 per cent of water, that of the next, or the second inch, only 35 per cent, and that of the heartwood, only 20 per cent. In such a tree the amount of water in any one section varies with the amount of sapwood, and is greater for the upper than the lower cuts, greater for the limbs than the stems, and greatest of all in the roots. Different trees, even of the same kind and from the same place, differ as to the amount of water they contain. A thrifty tree contains more water than a stunted one, and a young tree more than on old one, while the wood of all trees varies in its moisture relations with the season of the year. Seasonal Distribution of Water in Wood