TUNG-OLD OIL FOR NEW NEEDS 



table top so that a wet highball glass will not leave a 

 white ring, the kind that the United States Navy de- 

 mands for masts and decks and other wood exposed 

 to salt water, then you must get a varnish made with 

 tung oil. For such purposes there is nothing else as 

 good. 



Thus tung oil, in its way, is as vital a war munition 

 as rubber or quinine. It is also big business in world 

 trade some twenty million dollars a year or three hun- 

 dred million pounds, one hundred and twenty of which 

 we need all previously supplied by China. When the 

 Japs moved in, tung became a chronic scarcity. But we 

 are on the way to declaring our new tung oil inde- 

 pendence. 



The tung nuts David Fairchild brought back from 

 the Yangtze Valley were sprouted in California and 

 during 1906 the seedlings were widely distributed 

 throughout the South. Nobody burned with enthusiasm 

 for the new tree, chiefly because American varnish 

 makers, accustomed to linseed oil, had not yet dis- 

 covered the virtues of tung oil. 



Five Fairchild seedlings were sent to the superin- 

 tendent of the cemetery at Tallahassee, Florida. He was 

 not interested. The sickly looking little plants arrived 

 on a particularly busy day. Besides, what good was a 

 Chinese tung tree in a cemetery famous for its myrtle 

 and magnolias? So he threw them out on the green- 

 house trash heap. 



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