52 
treated on walls, and generally on the mode of preparing 
and selecting the materials for them. I shall now pro- 
ceed to the use of timber in framing, and to a descrip- 
tion of its several sorts, as also of the mode of fitting 
timbers together, so that they may be as durable as their 
nature will permit. 
CHAPTER IX. 
OF TIMBER. 
TIMBER should be felled from the beginning of the 
Autumn up to that time when the west wind begins to 
blow; never in the Spring, because at that period the 
trées are as it were pregnant, and communicate their na- 
tural strength to the yearly leaves and fruits they shoot 
forth. Being empty and swelled out, they become, by 
their great porosity, useless and feeble, just as we see 
females after conception in indifferent health till the 
period of their bringing forth. Hence slaves about to 
be sold are not warranted sound if they be pregnant; for 
the fœtus which goes on increasing in size within the 
body, derives nourishment from all the food which the 
parent consumes, and as the time of delivery approaches. 
the more ailing is the party by whom it is borne; as 
soon as the fœtus is brought forth, that which was before 
allotted for the nourishment of another being, once more 
free by the separation of the fœtus, returns to reinvigo¬ 
rate the body by the juices flowing to the large and 
empty vessels, and to enable it to regain its former na¬ 
tural strength and solidity. So, in the Autumn, the fruits 
being ripened and the leaves dry, the roots draw the 
moisture from the earth, and the trees are by those means 
recovered and restored to their pristine solidity. Up to