The Uses of Wood 



SOME INTERESTING MINOR INDUSTRIES 



"Top Stuff" in European forests is cut and bound in neat 

 bundles of fagots. Even small twigs are utilised as fuel. In the 

 Southern pineries a similar industry has cut "fat pine" into 

 small kindling wood for use in Northern cities. 



Brushwood is used in the construction of earthworks and 

 jetties to keep the channels of rivers narrow and deep. The 

 lower course of the Mississippi has been improved by sinking 

 out from shore latticework of limbs bound together. These 

 sink, become loaded with silt, and act as a barrier to prevent the 

 crumbling of the banks. The force of great waves, striking a 

 latticework of branches, is broken into innumerable harmless 

 ripples. Jetties are much cheaper to build than retaining walls. 



The great wickerware industry of Europe, now beginning to 

 establish itself in this country, consumes only the year's growth 

 on certain supple varieties of willow. 



Young growth of white birch that springs up in low ground 

 in New England is being consumed in quantities by spool factories 

 and manufactories of toys and other small wares. The trees 

 are used when scarcely larger than cornstalks in some of these 

 factories. 



Christmas trees for cities of the East strip hundreds of acres 

 of young hemlock and balsam firs each year. In the South 

 young longleaf pines are shipped North, and hollies and magnolias 

 of all sizes are cut and stripped of their branches for Christmas 

 decoration. 



In all this we see that the lumberman has left behind much 

 forest wealth, and people are learning to gather up the refuse 

 and turn it to account. The small sawmill is having its day in 

 many wooded regions of the country, making money in ways 

 which the big mill overlooked. There is much good stuff in 

 slabs, albeit sap wood is less sound and harder to season than heart 

 wood. Lath and shingles can be got out of logs unfit for first- 

 class boards. Tops of trees contain posts, stakes and hop and 

 bean poles. There is no better firewood than limbs from one to 

 two inches in diameter. Fuel which consumes much crooked 

 hardwood-stuff yields at last one of the best of fertilisers. 



Tanbark comes from many oaks and from hemlock in this 

 country. Chestnut and the black oaks are richest in tannin. 



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