SOUTHERN HORIZONS 



Chinese have become export-conscious. They do not 

 intend to lose the tung trade to us as they did tea to 

 Ceylon and India. Under the Ministry of Finance a 

 tung oil research institute has been set up with a five- 

 year plan for experiments in breeding, cultivating, and 

 processing. Maybe American tung oil will not have a 

 monopoly on its advantages of lighter color and more 

 uniform quality. At all events Chinese competition 

 must be reckoned with. 



Right at home, tung wisemen know that if the price 

 stays too high, chemists will be tempted to modify 

 cheaper oils to give them desirable tung oil character- 

 istics. Such work as has been done by A. G. H. Reim- 

 old, president of the Woburn Chemical Company, and 

 his chemist, K. A. Pelikan, in treating castor oil to make 

 it tunglike, will continue. Farsighted tung growers keep 

 an eye on experimental plantings of castor beans in 

 Texas and Florida. 



Newer and more threatening is the prospect of com- 

 petition from synthetic chemicals. One of those startling 

 surprises that chemists spring upon us is that a white 

 powder, which is really an alcohol, can be combined 

 with rosin and oils to make an excellent drying oil for 

 natural and synthetic resins. This contradictory chem- 

 ical is pentaerythritol. It again surprises us, being the 

 base of the superexplosive PETN, so powerful and 

 touchy that before it is loaded into bazooka rockets 

 and similar missiles it must be diluted with TNT. Be- 



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