784 Forestry Quarterly 



Balsa (Ochroma logopus) is a tropical American tree having a 

 very soft wood that the Missouri Botanical Garden has shown is 

 only about half as heavy as cork. This wood is being used in 

 life-rafts, life-belts and for buoys of various kinds, and is claimed 

 to be preferable to cork in other respects as well as in lightness. 



The manufacture of dyes from the waste of osage orange wood is 

 becoming a commercial success as a result of investigations 

 carried on by the Forest Products Laboratory, at Madison, 

 Wisconsin. Carloads of the wood are now being shipped to 

 Eastern extract plants from Oklahoma, and the dye is being 

 produced at the rate of about $750,000 per year. Before the 

 estabhshment of this industry the waste of oSage orange wood had 

 no market value and the extract plants were importing dyewood 

 from Mexico and Central America. 



The St. Paul and Tacoma Ltunber Company recently purchased 

 from the General Vehicle Company a second and improved electric 

 lumber tractor. The first machine has been in constant use for 

 about one year and has given excellent results. The tractors, 

 being operated by storage batteries, do not constitute a fire menace 

 to the lumber plant, and the charging current being taken from 

 the mill's Hghting plant, the cost of power is almost nil. It is 

 said the two tractors will displace 13 or 14 horses, effecting within 

 a short time a saving that will pay for the entire investment. 

 According to the factory records, the average length of life of 

 electric tractors is 10 years. 



A correspondent in the Gardeners* Chronicle states that 

 "Perhaps the largest, certainly the most remarkable, Catalpa in 

 London is that known as Bacon's Catalpa. It is growing near 

 the center of Gray's Inn gardens, and has a tablet attached which 

 bears the following words: 'Catalpa tree said to have been planted 

 by Francis Bacon when Master of the Walks, Anno Domini 1598.' 

 The tree is of unusual appearance owing to having been partly 

 uprooted many years ago. The stem, which is 18 inches in diam- 

 eter, rests on the groimd for about 9 feet of its length, and has, 

 fortunately, been well preserved by filling up the diseased and 

 hollow portions with cement, while the far-spreading, heavy 

 branches have been supported by props and thus prevented from 



