Excerpt from A Text-Book of Wood

The object of this undertaking is to provide a class-book for advanced students and to gather in a condensed form under one title all the many scattered morsels of information about wood which are to be found in works which treat of it as a secondary matter, as in botanical works, or if it be the subject in chief, then its treatment is not suitable for class-work.

Let me therefore commence by acknowledging my indebtedness to other authors, of whom there are some 1, 500 that I have consulted, about 300 being those on whom I have drawn. I am a compiler, and I am not ashamed of the name, albeit it is often thrown carelessly at a writer who, if only for his "immoderate pains and extraordinary studies, " deserves his hire. In my case I claim especial tenderness from the critics, inasmuch as I have travelled much on the Continent to consult books in obscure and remote libraries and to see specimens in Museums. In saving them this trouble and in sifting many a heap of millet-seed in which there was after all, no pearl, I have done the English reader good service.

In the Introduction it has not been possible to cite the name of every author of the details which make up our general knowledge of the subject, otherwise it would be necessary to recapitulate the history of Botany. Let me therefore set the matter at rest by saying that I claim no originality for that portion, it is simply "common form" arranged for the benefit of the learner. Elsewhere I have cited the originator of any detail of information, notwithstanding that it could have been gathered from a specimen lying at hand. When any fact has been borrowed from a brother compiler I acknowledge my debt both to him and to the original author, for example: - (Malonet ex Nouvion, 1750, Vol. I, p. 50), which means that being unable to run down the work of Malonet, I have availed myself of Nouvion, who quotes him and who no doubt was at some trouble in extracting the information. It is not fair to rob him of his labour.

The more solid matter is varied by the expression of many unorthodox views upon which the critic is welcome to fall. These heresies have been borne in upon me from contact with the wood itself. Finding that the current dogmas do not accord with my material, I have not hesitated to disagree. In a subject such as that of wood, which has so long been the Cinderella of the Sciences, those who have dealt with it from the botanical side have shown too much the bias of the laboratory, whilst, on the other hand, the practical writer has too often ignored the scientific aspect and has not seldom continued to repeat absurdities that sometimes date from Pliny.

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