468 



CHIPS. 



[Nov. 1885, 



Fifteen years .igo, the net forest 

 revenue of British India was ^50,000. 

 Now it is £400,000. Forest culture 

 h;is brought about the change. 



Apples in England and America. 

 — Mr. Josiah Hoopes, a well-known 

 Pennsylvania authority, has been call- 

 ing the attention of his brother orchard- 

 ists to the fact that the two best 

 varieties of 1545 exhibited at the 

 London Apple Exhibition of last 

 autumn bear a different character in 

 America, thus showing the importance 

 of each country depending on its own 

 varieties of this fruit, which he had 

 been told on a visit to an Edinburgh 

 garden that hundreds in the city had 

 never tasted. The King of Pippins, 

 which headed the London list for 

 dessert, is in America a very acid, poor 

 fruit, unworthy of cultivation. The 

 Ribston Pijipin, which was third on the 

 list, though a tine fruit on the other 

 side of the Atlantic, is inferior to many 

 other excellent varieties. 



Britain's Future. — England is the 

 largest importer of wood in Europe, 

 requiring 280,000,000 feet per annum 

 more than she produces. Inasmuch as 

 neither Canada nor the United States 

 can much longer spare large quantities, 

 and since no European country can now 

 produce much more than is required for 

 home consumption, while most of them 

 are importers. Great Britain must ere 

 long depend on her own resources. There 

 are extensive tracts of lands in Ireland 

 and Scotland that might be profitably 

 devoted to forest culture. — Mississippi 

 Valley Lumberman. 



Points about American Tanning. — 

 Three months are usually taken in 

 tanning and drying before the leather 

 is ready for sale. Oak and hemlock 

 bark are used to make the liquor. Oak- 

 tanned leather is considered to be of a 

 better quality than hemlock-tjinned,and 

 is used in making the more expensive 

 harnesses, belts, trunks, sample cases, 

 and soles of shoes. Hemlock leather is 

 none the less important. Split into 

 different thicknesses by a cylinder, with 

 a tension fine enough to divide a piece 

 of paper, it plays a pi-ominent part in 

 the hands of the inventive Yankee, who 

 makes of it morocco bindings for }x)oks, 

 French calf uppers for shoes, kid and 

 pebble goat, misses' and infants' shoes, 

 and, in fact, an endless variety of leather 

 manufactures. 



Wood for Cigar-Boxes. — Mr. F. R. 

 Jackson, of Kew, says in the Gardeners' 

 Cfironicle, that Cedrela odorata^ and not 

 the Red Cedar, furnishes the wood of 

 which cigar-boxes are made. 



Tree Fungus in Russia. — Accord- 

 ing to the Bidletin of the Society of 

 Naturalists of Moscow, the hitherto 

 unaccountable destruction of pine 

 forests is caused by the ravages of a 

 species of mushroom which takes 

 growth on the surface of the wood, and 

 afterwards penetrates and destroys the 

 tree. Maps are given in which the 

 path of the destroying fungus is traced 

 through the pine woods of Russia. 



Use for Birch Bark. — M. Peron, 

 a Belgian, has discovered a substance 

 in birch bark which })romises to be of 

 great importance in the manufacture 

 of many textile fabrics. When the fine 

 bark of the birch tree is distilled, it 

 yields a red oil, nearly one-fourth of 

 which consists of the special phenol or 

 carbolic acid which gives the well- 

 known odour to Russian leather. It is 

 now" found that the residue of green 

 tar of the birch yields neither acid nor 

 alkaloid, and it forms with alcohol 

 a solution'of great fluidity, which, how- 

 ever, when once dried, is unacted upon 

 by alcohol. It is this substance which 

 will unite with the most brilliant 

 colours, and is used by M. Peron for 

 treating textile fabrics, and will, he 

 thinks, render them almost inde- 

 structible. 



Distribution of Forest Trees in 

 THE United States. — The Tulip tree, 

 or Yellow Poplar {Liriodendron tulipi- 

 fera), is limited to a nearly square 

 territory lying east of 90" west longi- 

 tude, and between latitude 31° and 43°, 

 or almost wholly east of the Mississippi 

 and south of the region of the great 

 lakes, with the greatest density in the 

 region of Kentucky. The White Oak 

 (Quercu-s alba) grows as far north as 

 Georgian Bay and the St. Lawrence 

 River, and west to a nearly straight 

 north and south line running through 

 the western boundary of Missouri, it 

 being most common in the region of 

 Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ten- 

 nessee, and Arkansas. The White Ash 

 (Fra.iniui-s Americana) occupies almost 

 the same area, although it runs north 

 to Nova Scotia, and the area of greatest 

 densitv is farther north than the White 

 Oak. " 



