Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: tained some of the distinctive features of, buildings in wood, then may still be seen recorded, upon the columns of the five great orders of architecture, proofs that the Greeks or their precursors took special expedients to preserve timber from decay. The wooden pillar was placed upon a block of stone to preserve it from the humidity of the soil, and it was covered at the top by a slab or tile to throw off the rain. These contrivances are supposed to have been copied in the base and capital of the column, when wood came to be replaced by stone. Scamozzi imagines also, that the mouldings represent metal hoops, placed around the wooden pillars to prevent them from splitting. Allusions to various substances employed for preserving timber and other vegetable fibers from decay, are frequent in the writings of the ancients. Tar and pitch were used for painting or smearing wood from periods of the most remote antiquity. Greek and Roman authors narrate, that the astringent portions of the oil expressed from olives (Amurca 16), also oils derived from the Cedar, the Larch, the Juniper and the Nard- Bush (Valeriana) were used for the preservation of articles of value from decay, or from the attacks of insects. The magnificent statue of Zeus by Phidias was erected in a grove at Olympus where the atmosphere was damp ; the wooden platform upon which it stood was therefore imbued with oil. The famous statue of Diana at Ephesus was of wood. If its origin was believed to be miraculous, no standing miracle was relied on for its preservation. Pliny asserts upon the authority of an eye-witness, Mucianus, that it was kept saturated with oil of Nard by means of a number of small orifices bored in the woodwork. The same author remarks that wood well rubbed with oil of Cedar, is proof aginst wood-...