abstracts: forestry 503 



cord. The principal product of tlie sulphate process is an undercooked, 

 non-bleaching brown pulp, known as "kraft" pulp, which produces a 

 remarkably strong paper, very resistant to wear. The waste wood from 

 the lumber industry in the South suggests a source of cheap raw material. 



Tests were made, on longleaf pine (Pinus palustris). These tests 

 were of two kinds: (1) autoclave tests, comprising several series of 

 cooks made to determine the effects of varying the cooking conditions 

 in the sulphate process, and (2) semi-commercial tests, including cooks 

 made by both the sulphate and soda processes, in the first process 

 employing such cooking conditions as the autoclave tests indicated 

 would give good results, and in the second employing cooking conditions 

 that would give results comparable with those obtained from the sul- 

 phate cooks. 



The experiments, while not complete, show conclusively (1) that 

 longleaf pine is well adapted for the manufacture of natural-color kraft 

 pulps and papers ; (2) that the sulphate process of paper making applied 

 to this wood affords products'of better quality and of higher yields than 

 does the soda process; (3) that kraft papers can be made from longleaf 

 pine equal or superior in quality to the imported and domestic kraft 

 papers now on the market; and (4) that the high specific gravity of 

 the wood and the resultant high yield of pulp per cord give longleaf 

 pine an advantage possessed by few, if any, other commercially important 

 woods suitable for pulp making. The autoclave tests indicate that 

 there should be a certain combination of values for the variable cooking 

 conditions which will result in the most economical method of operation. 



FiNDLEY Burns. 



FORESTRY.— BaZsam fir. Raphael Zon. Bulletin of the U. S. 

 Department of Agriculture, 55: 1914. Pp. 68, with plates and 



. text figures. 



Balsam fir {Abies balsamea) has become commercially important 

 during the last 20 years through the enormous expansion of the pulp 

 industry and the increase in the price of spruce. It constitutes numeri- 

 cally about 20 per cent of the coniferous forests in northern New York 

 and Maine, and is abundant in many parts of New Hampshire, Vermont, 

 northern Michigan, northern Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Wherever 

 it grows it is closely associated with spruce, the two species almost 

 constantly contesting for occupancy of the ground. Under present 

 methods of lumbering, however, balsam fir is increasing at the expense 

 of spruce in the second-growth throughout the entire range of the two 

 species. Balsam fir, while to some extent inferior to spruce as construe- 



