Logs to Burn I have been asked for the author's
name of a well-known doggerel verse en the virtues of various woods for the winter fire. The large number of different versions would suggest that the rhymes are traditional and have been altered again and again by local poets, so to call them. The oldest are certainly old. The particular version for which the author's name is required (by an anthologist) has, I think, a new introduction. It begins thus:
"Logs to burn ; logs to burn ; Logs to save the coal a turn" ; and utters a warning, very necessary today, against the specious claims of the seller. However, although the versions vary a good deal, there is very general agreement on the relative merit of this and that species. They conclude with an ardent admiration for ash log as the perfect fuel without qualification ; whether "green or old," they are " worth their weight in gold." With equal agreement elm is condemned—wrongly as I hold—along with chestrut. The real truth about elm is that it is peculiarly conservative of its sap, and therefore must be much split and long dried, when even its running roots burn well and brightly.
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