I 



. WOOD AND ITS USES 329 



the decline as rural communities are electrified. Fuelwood is one 

 of the important means of utilization for logging waste left in the 

 woods. Many farm woodlands are maintained as such for their 

 fuelwood alone; the regions of greatest importance as producers 

 of fuelwood being, in order, the South, Pacific Northwest, 

 Lake States, and Northeast. Charcoal, or carbonized wood, is 

 obtained by heating wood in absence of air. It may be produced 

 in outdoor charcoal pits, holes dug in the earth and filled with 

 wood scraps to be ignited. These are covered with straw, leaves, 

 and earth, and allowed to burn slowly, with only a small amount 

 of air admitted, for eight to twenty one days, depending upon 

 the amount of wood contained. Most of the present day char- 

 coal is produced in the processes of hardwood and softwood 

 distillation. 



Cork. — When this term is mentioned, one thinks first of 

 bottle stoppers, although this use of cork accounts for only about 

 4% of the country's cork utilization, most of which is for insula- 

 tion, with gaskets and linoleum using about one-fourth of the 

 total. The world's cork supply comes from the western Mediter- 

 ranean area, mostly Spain and Portugal, where it is harvested as 

 the bark of the cork oak, a small bushy tree which grows in open 

 groves of thirty to sixty trees per acre. The first-formed cork is 

 rough and deeply furrowed, so that it cannot be used except for 

 conversion into ground cork, to be remanufactured into cork 

 composition products. This virgin cork is removed from the tree 

 with care as new crops of high quality cork become available at 

 intervals of eight to ten years if the trees are properly cared for. 

 After collection from the tree, cork is air-seasoned and then 

 boiled and scraped free of the rough outer portions, after which it 

 is flattened, dried, and shipped to the manufacturing centers. 

 There are many grades of cork, depending upon the uses for 

 which the particular quality of cork is fitted. 



There are many products of the forest other than wood, de- 

 tailed discussion of which is omitted here. A large number of 

 these come not from trees themselves, but are found growing 

 under the protection of the forest canopy. Throughout the Appa- 



