102 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



Some of the local veneer mills now see only a five years* 

 supply ahead of them, which means that when supplies of 

 this kind are shipped from more distant points that the ship- 

 per will have to pay more for them and this will have to be 

 charged up to the consumer. It is the old story of "Jones, 

 he pays the freight." There has been a big advance in the 

 price of "knocked down" material for fruit and berry boxes, 

 and barrels have reached such a price that their use for 

 apples is almost prohibitive. This means that more fruit 

 must be shipped in smaller veneered packages and that we 

 will not buy in as large quantities as heretofore — again a 

 greater hardship on the consumer. 



Col. Greeley cites the fact that the supply of lumber for 

 boxes is getting to be a very serious matter with the citrus 

 growers in Florida. They use 12,000,000 boxes yearly, each 

 requiring about 5>^ board feet of lumber, while the shippers 

 of garden truck require about 13,000,000 board feet ad- 

 ditional. With the rapid exhaustion of Southern pine this 

 may in a few years work great hardship to the citrus in- 

 dustry. 



The same thing, we believe, is of importance in Southern 

 Illinois and should lead men who do not need these wet bot- 

 tomland tracts for farming to save them, since growth is 

 rapid and there should always be a good market for the 

 faster growing varieties of wood in the form of logs for 

 veneer. There is also a chance to use such lands as game 

 refuges without seriously interfering with their devotion 

 to timber growing, a fact which will interest our sportsmen 

 friends whose lakes and ponds have been taken over for 

 agriculture. Some of these bottomland woods in the vicinity 

 of McClure also contain a considerable per cent, of cypress 

 which will always be a valuable species, worthy of encour- 

 agement wherever it occurs naturally. 



B. SAWMILLS 



The sawmills in this region may be divided into two main 

 classes, (1) small portable mills which do contract sawing 

 aiid (2) larger mills, owned by hardwood, coal or veneer 

 companies. 



(1) Portable Mills. Up the hollows in Alexander 

 County, at quite a distance from the beaten track, you will 



