Excerpt from Wood Preservation in the United States The decay of wood is not an inorganic process, like the rusting of iron or the crumbling of stone, but is due to the activities of low forms of plant life called bacteria and fungi. Bacteria are among the simplest of all forms of life, often consisting of but a single cell, microscopic in size. Sometimes several such cells may be attached to each other, and so form a thread or filament. Usually they are colorless, and multiply by the division of the parent cell into other cells which, in turn, divide again. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.