employed in navigating these ships. To cut
our wood, therefore, is no trifle: a maritime
trade of great importance has to be organised
before we can get the wood to cut. Something
like eight or nine hundred wood-laden ships
enter the Thames every year. These ships
creep out of the way into canals; the Commercial,
or the East Country, or the Grand Surrey,
or the West India Docks, or into the small basin
at the mouth of the Regent's Canal; they
are not allowed to block up the Thames.
The Commercial Dock is the giant home of
the timber trade in London; nearly half the
ships go thither. In foreign timber-ships,
the wood is landed from the ships by their
own crews; but in British ships men called
"lumpers" and "deal porters" are employed
to transfer the wood from the ships to barges
or lighters, and another transfer takes place
from these to the quay or wharf in the Docks.
Sometimes hewn logs are thrust through holes
in the ship into the water, and thence landed
in rafts. It is giddy work to build up the
piles of deals and planks on shore, each being
carried up singly by a man who runs along a
frail narrow inclined board as his only support;
but it is only one among many kinds of giddy
and dangerous labour which porters and
labourers have to undertake for a small
pittance.

Thus we get the wood. And now—how to
cut it? Our old acquaintances the sawyers
have been somewhat interfered with by the
steam-engine; but they still constitute a
numerous and somewhat peculiar class of
men. The "top-sawyer" is not solely an
English phenomenon; he is to be found in
Egypt at the present day, with his turbaned
head and his bare legs; and, if we mistake
not, Wilkinson shows that there were
top-sawyers in the days of the Pharaohs. As
respects our metropolis, there are timber
sawyers, shipwright sawyers, hard-wood
sawyers, and cooper sawyers. The first
of these cut the timbers for builders and
carpenters; while the other three groups are
sufficiently designated by their names. The
timber sawyers alone are those whom we
need care about in this place. Some of them
work in "scaffold" pits, some in "sunk" pits,
according as the bottom-sawyer is at the level
or below the level of the ground. And see-saw
work it assuredly is; the topman's work
is principally to draw up the ponderous saw;
the pitman's to draw it down—but both
aid in both processes. The topman is the
captain of the saw, guiding its cut along
the chalk-mark; but he and his "pitman"
share between them the pay, which is about
threepence or so per cut along a twelve foot
deal. The saws are five, six, or even seven
feet in length, the largest weighing very little
less than sixty pounds. Now, at ten strokes
in a minute, and in a day of ten hours' work,
this labour has been calculated to equal the
raising of half a hundredweight to a height
of eight miles—a formidable result, which,
for the sake of the poor fellows themselves,
we should hope is slightly exaggerated.

About the year 1815 steam saw-mills were
first established in the metropolis. But even
before this—before the close of the last century
—horse-mills were used; six or eight or ten
saws were fixed vertically in a frame, and these
were drawn up and down by horse power,
cutting a log into as many planks as there
were saws in the frame. But coals for a
steam-engine are less costly than oats for a horse;
and thus steam-power superseded horse-power.
The steam-engine beats the sawyer
hollow, whether horse or man. It ordinarily
makes a hundred and fifty strokes per
minute. The machine-saws are not so long
as those used by the hand sawyers. The
log travels on to meet the saw, and does not
require the saw to travel to it. "Biddy,
Biddy," is asked to come and be killed, and
it comes.

The circular saws for cutting veneers are
far more remarkable. For cutting deals,
and planks, and boards, saws varying in
diameter from eighteen to thirty-six inches
in diameter suffice; but for cutting veneers,
perhaps sixteen to the inch out of a log
two feet wide, the saws rise to the great
diameter of eighteen feet. It is really a
most delicate process, as conducted at Messrs.
Esdaile's saw-mills in the City Road, to
see this eighteen foot monster slicing away
at a huge log of mahogany. The saw is not
made wholly of steel, like most other saws;
it is built up mainly of wood, in circular form,
with segments of the best and toughest steel
fixed to the periphery, and notched with
teeth in the customary form for a saw. The
accuracy must be wonderful to bring all
these pieces rigorously into one plane eighteen
feet in diameter; the least distortion would
shiver either the log or the saw or both to
fragments.

Formerly veneers were cut by a process
of development, properly so called, for
it was by a kind of unwrapping; and
maple veneers are still so cut in America.
It is a beautiful process. The log is brought
to a cylindrical form in a lathe; and a tine
saw lying along the surface of the cylinder
in a greatly inclined position, and working
rapidly to and fro while the log rotates, cuts
off a continuous shaving or veneer, never
ending until it arrives near the centre of the
log. Almost the whole log is thus cut into
one unbroken sheet of veneer. To illustrate
the power of this process, a veneer of ivory
was shown in the American department of
the Great Exhibition, shortly before its close;
it was forty feet long by about one foot in
width, and had been developed from one
elephant tusk. There is one disadvantage,
however, in this mode of cutting veneers;
wood is generally less beautiful in the grain
near the centre than near the circumference
of the tree; and this gives rise to a decided
difference of quality in the ends of a piece of