474 EDITORIAL NOTES. [Dec. 



shall adopt them generally in place of wooden sleepers or not, they 

 naturally ask us a sufficiently high price for the article to cover the 

 cost of the new plant which they must have put down. The 

 Belgian firm has the plant already. My Directors therefore tliought 

 as the quantity required is, as I said before, very small, about 250 

 tons, and for trial only, it was better to let the Belgian firm supply 

 them than to pay a price for the article very much in excess of that 

 which the Belgian house charges. You may take it for granted 

 that we do not like sending orders out of the country. If the 

 experiment of using steel sleepers is successful, our consumption 

 will be large, and I am sure there are plenty of houses who will 

 then be willing to put down the necessary plant at their own cost, 

 without increasing, by some special addition, the ordinary price of 

 the manufactured article. I will rec^uest our Stores Department to 

 send you a form of tender wlien we are in a position to give any 

 further orders." In this announcement there appears to be trouble 

 looming in the future for the dealers in timber railway sleepers, and 

 for the growers also. But as any considerable increase in the iron trade 

 would create benefits that would not be exclusively enjoyed by that 

 trade, it may fairly be hoped that should the experiment in question 

 succeed, compensating advantages may arise even to the timber trade 

 in its producing and selling branches through the increase of 

 general trade that may be expected in that case to accrue from the 

 impetus that would be given to the iron trade. 



The Califoenian PiEDWOOD Company. — Edinburgh readers will 

 be aware that legal measures are in process, notably in the Court 

 of Session, virtually to resuscitate this unfortunate concern, by the 

 handing over of its estates and liabilities to a new company, to be 

 designated The Edinburgh and San Francisco Piedwood Company 

 Limited. Omitting criticism meanwhile on the financial aspects of 

 this new venture, some facts on its forestal side may interest. 

 The timber area for the operations of the old company was 70,000 

 acres. Haulage through woods to a spot where timber rafts might 

 be floated to the steam sawmills, was an outstanding obstacle to 

 success. A railway twelve miles long may now Ije expected to 

 obviate this ; and it will also allow timber carriage to go on steadily 

 throughout the year. The old company could only bring down its 

 saleable products at those seasons of the year when rafts could 

 float down the streams flov\-ing through the forest into the main 

 river. The hollow stump of the redwood into which visitors 

 wandered at the International Forestry Exhibition represented a 



