336 ANNUAL REPORTS OF DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



scores of years and has made possible the present productiveness of 

 their forests. Similar research work in this country is a necessity, 

 and no time should be lost in getting it started in every important 

 forest region. Wlien the forest experiment stations have been built 

 up to the size that the regions in which they are located justify they 

 will return their cost in the future production of timber supplies 

 manyfold. The widespread recognition of the necessity for research 

 work through the medium of such stations shows that the country is 

 alive to the importance of growing the timber crops necessary to 

 meet' our many and varied requirements. 



FOREST PRODUCTS INVESTIGATIONS— FOREST PRODUCTS LABORATORY. 



The Forest Service has devoted much attention to the problem of 

 finding raw material for "pulp and paper. If existing conditions 

 continue, no otiier fibrous material can replace wood to any great 

 extent in paper manufacture. This conclusion has been reached 

 after the investigation of many of the most promising substitutes, 

 notably waste from plant crops. The main effort of the Forest 

 Service is therefore being directed to adapting pulping processes to 

 more kinds of wood. Only five or six out of a hundred or more com- 

 mercial timbers in the United States now find extensive use in pulp 

 and paper making. Spruce, fir, and hemlock constitute 78 per cent 

 of all the pulpwood now consumed, and relatively small supplies of 

 these woods are left within reach of the existing pulp mills in the 

 Northeastern and Lake States. 



Forest Products Laboratory experiments with about 90 of the 

 little-used species have shown that a number of them can be pulped 

 satisfactorily. The discovery made two years ago that the pines of 

 the Southern States could be made into high grades of white paper 

 without radical changes in mill practice has already been adopted 

 commercially to some extent, releasing corresponding quantities of 

 spruce for newsprint. The same series of pulping trials helped 

 to attract the attention of pulp mills in the Lake States to jack 

 pine by showing the possibilities of this wood as a substitute for 

 hemlock, at present the chief source of sulphite pulp in this region. 

 The pulping of jack pine has also been accomplished on a laboratory 

 scale by semikraft process, which produces a pulp suitable for the 

 manufacture of high-grade container board. The same process is 

 adaptable to other species and offers possibilities in utilizing lumber 

 mill waste, especially from long-fibered resinous woods, including 

 southern pine and possibly Douglas fir. 



An enlargement of the raw material for newsprint manufacture, a 

 critical problem now faced by the United States, is foreseen in other 

 experiments under way at the laboratory. It was found that by a 

 certain mild chemical treatment wood could be pulped with a yield 

 as high as 80 or 90 per cent- — double that heretofore obtained by any 

 chemical pulping process — and that the product could be made di- 

 rectly, without bleaching, into a paper similar to newsprint. Hard- 

 woods in particular respond favorably to this treatment, indicating 

 that it may become feasible to manufacture newsprint from woods 

 very different in character from the few now employed in the 

 ground-wood process. The pulping is accomplished without the 

 excessive power required to produce ground-wood pulp. If this 



