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Some shingles were prepared for a railroad freight house at East St. Louis, but all the carpenters who put them on were taken very ill, and one of them died.
The arsenic and corrosive sublimate effloresced from the ties along the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. Cattle came and licked them for the sake of the salt, and they died, so that the track for ten miles was strewed with dead cattle. The farmers rose up in arms, and made the railroad take up and burn the ties. The company promoting foremanizing was sued and cast in heavy damages, and it went out of business.
In 1870 Mr. A.B. Tripler patented a mixture of arsenic and salt, and the succeeding year a specimen of wood prepared under that patent was submitted to the Board of Public Works of Washington, D.C., and examined by its chemist, Mr. W.C. Tilden (experiment 19). He found the impregnation uneven, and the absorptive power high, but he did not find any arsenic, though its use was claimed.
The Samuel process (experiment 20) consisted in the injection, first, of a solution of sulphate of iron, and afterward of common burnt lime. Mr. Tilden reported the wood to be brittle, and the water used to test the absorptive power to have been filled with threads of fungi in forty-eight hours.
The Taylor process (experiment No. 21) used a solution of sulphide of calcium in pyroligneous acid. It was condemned by Mr. Tilden.
The Waterbury process (experiment 22) consisted in forcing in a solution of common salt, followed by dead oil or creosote. It was also condemned by Mr. Tilden.
The examinations of Mr. Tilden extended to some fourteen different processes, most of which have already been noticed in this report, and their practical results given.
The Board of Public Works, however, laid down a considerable amount of prepared wood pavement in Washington, all of which is understood to have proved a dismal failure. After a good deal of inquiry, your committee has been enabled to obtain information of the results of three of these experiments.
The pine paving blocks upon Pennsylvania Avenue (experiment 23) were first kiln-dried, and then immersed in a hot solution of sulphate of iron.
The spruce blocks on E Street (experiment 24) were treated with chloride of zinc, or, in other words, burnettized; but the mode of application is not stated.
The pine blocks upon Sixteenth Street (experiment 25) were treated with the residual products of petroleum distillation. It is stated that this was the only process in which pressure was used.
In from three and a half to four and a half years the blocks were badly decayed, and large portions of the streets were almost impassable, while other streets paved in the same year with untreated woods remained in fair condition.
It has been stated to your committee that this result, which did much toward bringing all wood preserving processes into contempt, was chiefly owing to the very dishonest way in which the preparation was done; that in fact there was a combination between the officials and the contractors by which the latter were chiefly interested "how not to do it," and that the above results, therefore, prove very little on the subject of wood preservation.
Through the kindness of the United States Navy Department your committee is enabled to give the results of a series of experiments (Nos. 26 to 41 inclusive) which have been carried on at the Norfolk, Va., Navy Yard, for a series of years, by Mr. P.C. Asserson, Civil Engineer, U.S.N., to test the effect of various substances as a protection against the Teredo navalis. It will be noticed that the application of two coats of white zinc paint, of two coats of red lead, of coal tar and plaster of Paris mixed, of kerosene oil, of rosin and tallow mixed, of fish oil and tallow mixed and put on hot, of verdigris, of carbolic acid, of coal tar and hydraulic cement, of Davis' patent insulating compound, of compressed carbolized paper, of anti-fouling paint, of the Thilmany process, and of "vulcanized fiber," have proved failures.
The only favorable results have been that oak piles cut in the month of January and driven with the bark on have resisted four or five years, or till the bark chafed or rubbed off, and that cypress piles, well charred, have resisted for nine years.
This merely confirms the general conclusion which has been stated under the head of creosoting, that nothing but the impregnation with creosote, and plenty of it, is an effectual protection against the teredo. Numberless experiments have been tried abroad and in this country, and always with the same result.
There are quite a number of other experiments which your committee has learned about which are here passed in silence. The accounts of them are vague, or the promised results of such slight importance as not to warrant cumbering with them this already too voluminous report.
The committee also forbears from discussing the merits of the many patents which have been taken out for wood preservation. It had prepared a list of them, and investigated the probable success of many of them, but has concluded that it is better to confine itself to the results of actual tests, and to stick to ascertained facts.
Neither does the committee feel called upon to point out the great importance of the subject, and the economical advantages which will result from the artificial preparation of wood as its price advances. They hope, however, that the members of this Society, in discussing this report, will dwell upon this point.
We shall instead give as briefly as possible the general conclusions which we have reached as the result of our protracted investigation.
 
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