News and Notes 167 



providing for a bond issue by the Provincial Government to be 

 used in building 30 four-mast semi-Diesel auxiliary schooners. 

 These schooners will have a carrying capacity of about 2,000,000 

 feet of lumber each. They are to be turned over to lumber manu- 

 facturers of British Columbia, who are to assume the bonds and 

 pay for the schooners as bonds fall due. They are to be operated 

 in the lumber trade of the entire Pacific coast. Keels of 6 or 8 

 of these vessels are to be laid in British Columbia by April 1, 

 and the remainder are to be built as the demand increases. It 

 is reported that these vessels will take about 200,000,000 feet of 

 lumber annually, whereas the present exportation is only about 

 60,000,000 feet. 



Mr. H. R. MacMillan, Chief of the British Columbia Forest 

 Service, who holds a special commission under the Department 

 of Trade and Commerce to study the extension of foreign mar- 

 kets for Canadian lumber, has forwarded to Dr. J. S. Bates, 

 Superintendent of the Forest Products Laboratories of Canada, 

 from Johannesburg, South Africa, a small specimen of wood for 

 identification. This was a piece of wood from an ore bin which 

 had seen 20 years hard usage in one of the Johannesburg mines 

 and is still in an excellent state of preservation. Microscopic 

 examination by the wood technologist of the Laboratories showed 

 that the specimen was Douglas fir. It is interesting to see that 

 Douglas fir has shown up so well in this particular service test 

 and is another proof of the high quality of the foremost Cana- 

 dian structural wood. 



The decision of the various Dominion Government Departments 

 and of the Canadian Pacific Railway to use Canadian timber only, 

 to the exclusion of imported timber, is a decided advantage in the 

 utilization of Canadian timber and, therefore, marks a definite gain 

 for the cause of conservation in Canada. 



Southern pine, even in the year of 1915, when Canada was 

 at war and when there was a great decrease in the consump- 

 tion of lumber, was imported to the extent of 95 million feet, 

 having a value of over 3 million dollars. In previous years, very 

 much larger quantities were imported and this in the face of 

 an adverse trade balance for Canada and in the face of a supply 

 in Canada of better timber at an equal or lower cost, grown and 

 manufactured entirely within the Dominion. 



