The state of preservation of old oak depends very largely upon the position which it has occupied. The weather-worn, sun- and rain-split timbers and barge boards of old. houses differ widely in surface from oak which has decorated the interior of a church. The sharpness of the original chiselling is very little impaired in the elaborate pulpit, dated 1616, at Croscombe, near Wells. That and the upper part of the screen have not been subjected to the treatment of pew ends which may be expected to show traces of the polish induced by the generations of worshippers who have brushed past them. But even these do not compare with domestic furniture in that respect. The sharpness of the work on a pulpit, therefore, need be by no means so suspicious as the same degree found upon a chair or chest which purports to have been in the same farmhouse as long as the pulpit has been in the church. In chairs and chests and tables (not those used in chancels) we may reasonably expect to find that amenity and absence of excessive hardness or sharpness, which is the result of wear, and the filling up of hollows by the wax, and the dirt and dust which it encloses. Innumerable dints and scars have broken the severity of the straight lines of mouldings, and have mitigated uncompromising corners.

It is doubtless true that dints and bruises may be intentionally produced. The 'coup de pied intelligent', as a French writer has amusingly called it - from the foot of a master in the craft - could no doubt be made useful to deceive. It has its counterpart in the hand of the 'old soldier' who is said to sit for hours inducing a factitious surface upon new French furniture of the eighteenth century styles, by mere address of his horny but caressing palm. But all this is a matter of time and money, and except for a very high stake would not be worth a maker's while.

We read, too, from time to time, of the ingenuity with which worm-holes are made with hot wires or by other methods. An amusing American notion was that of shooting at new pieces of furniture at varying ranges with different-sized shot. The latest story comes from Vienna, where worms are bred in the furniture and afterwards killed off by Roentgen rays. Most of these stories may be regarded as fairy tales. Dealers are more occupied in filling worm-holes up than in making them, though, bearing in mind the story of the tiara of Saitapharnes, and of many other doubtful curiosities, we can never afford to lull our suspicions to rest.

Meantime genuine worm-holes are plentiful enough. They vary in diameter, and are not perfectly round. Sometimes the animal has apparently made two or three auger-marks which come out at the surface almost in the same place, with the result that the roundness of the original bore is replaced by quite a large irregular opening, an eighth of an inch long. The size of one worm-hole averages perhaps a small sixteenth of an inch. Signs of the worm's active presence are found in the very fine powder which he produces as the result of his borings. This may be seen either blocking up the hole, or lying round its edge. The opening goes very little way in a directly downward direction - in fact the holes may be said usually to slant almost from the first, so that a pin thrust in perpendicularly will only penetrate about one-eighth of an inch. The worm burrows along like a mole beneath the surface, and, like the mole, shows us the results of his excavations in a modest heap. In places where he has made extensive ravages sometimes a whole length of his tube is laid bare. This is often to be seen on the very edge of a piece of wood, as, for instance, on the lower cross-piece of the back in the child's chair of walnut wood before mentioned.

Here there is a very irregular furrow more than an inch and a half long, and in some places more than one-eighth broad. The worm has gone along quite close to the surface for the whole of that distance, till at last a knock or a scrape has laid bare his burrowings. There may be many other tubes close to it as yet undiscovered. The creature has a preference for light-coloured sappy wood, so that in some panels or stiles the field of operations is often definitely confined to that part where the lightness of colour shows the inferior timber. He seems to have an aversion to mahogany, though he is to be found in the strengthening pieces of other wood such as beech sometimes placed under the frame of the seat in Chippendale chairs.