5 FEBRUARY 1876, Page 24

Timber and Timber-Trees. By Thomas Laslett (Macmillan and Co.) —Botanical

treatises are found to be of too technical a character for practical purposes in carpentry and naval architecture. This book has been written with the view of supplying information concerning the growth of timber-trees, their defects, the character of the various woods, and their adaptabilty to the purposes of ship-building in particular, and general work. Mr. Laslett, from his long experience in the Royal dockyards, has special qualifications for writing such a work, and the tables of experiments, transverse, tensile, and vertical, will be of great value in determining what woods must ho used, and how much strain can be put on them for building purposes. The chapter on defects in trees is not the least valuable part of the work.