At No. 79, Gracechurch Street, London, a room on the second floor was inhabited, as soon as finished, by a tenant who had kamptulicon laid down. This floor was formed in the ordinary way, with the usual sound boarding of strips of wood, and concrete two inches thick filled in on the same, leaving a space of about two inches under the floor boards. The floor was seriously decayed by dry rot in a few months down to the level of the concrete pugging, below which it remained sound, and could be pulled up with the hand.
We will now leave oil-cloth and kamptulicon, and try what “Keene’s cement” will do for an “air-tight” partition of a house.
At No. 16, Mark Lane, London, a partition was constructed of sound yellow deal quarters, covered externally with “Keene’s cement, on lath, both sides.” It was removed about two years after its construction, when it was found that the timber was completely _perished from dry rot_; so much so, that the timbers parted in the middle in places, and were for some time afterwards moist.
It is still unfortunately the custom to keep up the old absurd fashion of disguising woods, instead of revealing their natural beauties. Instead of wasting time in perfect imitations of scarce or dear woods, it would be much better to employ the same amount of time in fully developing the natural characteristics of many of our native woods, now destined for decorative purposes because they are cheap and common; although many of our very commonest woods are very beautifully grained, but their excellences for ornamentation are lost because our decorators have not studied the best mode of developing their beauties. Who would wish that stained deal should be painted in imitation of oak? or that the other materials of a less costly and inferior order should have been painted over instead of their natural faces being exposed to view? There are beauties in all the materials used. The inferior serve to set off by comparison the more costly, and increase their effect. The red, yellow, and white veins of the pine timber are beautiful: the shavings are like silk ribbons, which only nature could vein after that fashion, and to imitate which would puzzle all the _tapissiers_ of the Rue Mouffetard, in Paris.