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AMERICAN FORESTRY 



birch, hard maple, ash, locust, longleaf pine or cherry, 

 which have comparatively high fuel values, one cord, 

 weighing about 4,000 pounds, is required to equal one 

 ton of coal. 



It takes a cord and a half of shortleaf pine, hemlock, 

 red gum, Douglas fir, sycamore, or soft maple, which 

 weigh about 3,000 pounds a cord, to equal a ton of coal, 

 while for cedar, redwood, poplar, catalpa, Norway pine, 

 cypress, basswood, spruce and white pine, two cords, 

 weighing about 2,000 pounds each, are required. 



Weight for weight, however, there is very little differ- 

 ence between various species. Resin affords about twice 

 as much heat as wood, so that resinous woods have a 

 greater heat value per pound than non-resinous woods, 

 and this increased value varies, of course, with the resin 

 content. 



The available heat value of a cord of wood depends 

 also on the amount of moisture present. When the wood 

 is green part of the heat which it is capable of yielding is 

 taken up in evaporating the water. The greater amount 

 of water in the wood the more heat is lost. 



Furthermore, cords vary as to the amount of solid 

 wood they contain, even when they are of the standard 

 dimension and occupy 128 cubic feet of space. A certain 

 proportion of this space is made up of air spaces between 

 the sticks, and this air space may be considerable in a 



cord of twisted, crooked and knotty sticks. Out of the. 

 128 cubic feet, a fair average of solid wood is about 80 

 cubic feet. 



This, however, applies to the standard cord, in which 

 the sticks are cut to four-foot lengths and piled four feet 

 high and eight feet long. Instead of buying the four-foot 

 lengths, however, most people nowadays have the sticks 

 cut into two-foot lengths by a gasoline saw. This re- 

 sults in a saving of both time and labor. The purchaser 

 should, however, take care to see that he gets full meas- 

 urement when wood is bought in this way. In parts of 

 New England a stack of 16-inch wood four feet high and 

 eight feet long is commonly sold as a "run," but contains 

 only one-third of a cord. 



Where wood is to be burned in a stove or furnace in- 

 tended for coal, it will be found desirable, the foresters 

 say, to cover the grate partly with sheet iron or fire 

 brick, in order to reduce the draught. If this is not done 

 the wood is wasted by being consumed too fast, and 

 makes a very hot fire which, in a furnace, may damage 

 the fire box. 



It is pointed out, however, that heat value is not the 

 only test of usefulness in fuel wood, and since 95 per 

 cent of all wood used for fuel is consumed for domestic 

 purposes, largely in farm houses, such factors as rapidity 

 of burning and ease of lighting are important. Each 



Photograph by Western Newspaper Union. 



THEY HAVE JOINED THE MOVEMENT TO "CUT-A CORD" OF WOOD 



This picture shows a revival of the old-fashioned chopping bee. Men and women of prominence engaged in the work of converting trees into fuel 

 on the Lincoln estate of James J. Storrow, fuel administrator for Massachusetts. Mr. Storrow turned over 22 acres of woodlot for the use of the 

 Cut-a-Cord Club, the members of which are here shown at work. 



