Notes and Comment. 151 



By a cooperative undertaking between the United States 

 Department of Agriculture and the University of Wisconsin, the 

 Forest Products Laboratory at Madison, Wisconsin, to be opened 

 June 4, has been established to aid, through experiments and 

 demonstrations, the lessening of waste in the manufacture and 

 use of wood. The state has erected for the purpose a new build- 

 ing at the university, and will furnish also the light, heat, and 

 power. The Department of Agriculture has supplied the 

 equipment and apparatus and will maintain the force of thirty- 

 five or forty persons required to carry on the work. Through this 

 arrangement, the United States has secured perhaps the largest 

 and best equipped w^ood testing laboratory in the world. 



The laboratory will be prepared to make tests on the strength 

 and other properties of wood, to investigate the processes of 

 treating timber to prevent destruction by decay and other causes, 

 to study the saving of wood refuse by distillation processes, to 

 examine the fiber of various woods for paper and other purposes, 

 and to determine the influence of the microscopic structure of 

 wood on its characteristics and properties. Facilities are at 

 hand, in fact, for almost any kind of test on wood that practical 

 conditions may require. 



The circular sent out by the United States Forester, while 

 thus emphasizing the practical importance of the work to be 

 undertaken, makes it apparent that the investigations planned 

 will also be of great scientific value. 



The University of Arizona Agricultural Experiment Station 

 has issued a useful bulletin on "Drought-Resistant Plants for 

 the Arid Southwest," by Professor J. J. Thornber. The amount 

 of first hand information contained in this paper, which appears 

 under the modest title of "Timely Hints for Farmers," and its 

 importance for the whole arid and semi-arid region included in 

 its scope is such as to call for more extended notice than can be 

 given it in the present issue of the Plant World. Arrange- 

 ments will accordingly be made for its reproduction, in whole or 

 in part, in a later number. 



In nowise inconsistent with the thought expressed in the 

 preceding notices is a timely word from the preface of Dr. Jep- 

 son's recently published "Trees of California." The author 



