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AMERICAN FORESTRY 



States in connection with harvesting our crops, is at 

 present made from sisal imported from Central America 

 and Mexico. As a result of the disturbed conditions in 

 Mexico, American twine manufacturers are seriously em- 

 barrassed for raw material. A substitute has been sought 

 in paper twine, and experiments in this direction are 

 still under way. 



Strong cordage, ropes, burlap, and similar articles 

 can be made from paper, and, in fact, are being made 

 from it. Our common burlap and course bags are ordi- 

 narily made from imported jute. Shortly after war was 

 declared the price of burlap bags increased so greatly 

 that one large grain dealer seriously considered taking 

 the profit to be derived from the sale of his reserve stock 

 of bags and going out of business. In the case of a war 

 of our own, the United States should be in a position, 

 through its enormous supplies of wood fiber, to meet all, 

 or at least the great part of, its needs for the twine 

 necessary to harvest its crops and for substitutes for 

 burlap bags and hemp ropes. 



The American public, perhaps unawares, has long 



been accustomed to articles of clothing made from wood 

 under these terms " fiber silk " and " artificial silk." The 

 viscose process transforms wood pulp into a strong, dura- 

 ble, lustrous thread that may be woven into any desired 

 fabric; accordingly, the morning newspaper and hand- 

 some cravat may have a common origin. 



Finally, should the South ever be invaded and its cot- 

 ton crops seized, a happening which military and naval 

 authorities regard as not at all unlikely in case of war 

 with a strong power, the cellulose from our forests would 

 have to serve us, not alone for explosives, but for textiles 

 as well. Thus, in more ways than in the production of 

 lumber, the forest may serve a nation called upon to meet 

 the conditions of modern warfare, and for that matter, 

 too, of commercial progress in times of peace. Nor is 

 it beyond the bounds of possibility that the investigations 

 and experiments which are being carried on at the Gov- 

 ernment's Forest Products Laboratory and elsewhere may 

 find still other uses for wood that will add just so much 

 more to the importance of the forest in our national life. 



Under Fire in War Zone Forests 



(Passed by the Field Censor September 13, 1916) 

 By Lieutenant H. K. Robinson 



Twenty- first Howitzer Battery, Canadian Expeditionary Force 



INFORMATION as to the changes in forest manage- 

 ment in the war zone, caused by the change in supply 

 and demand brought about by the war, might easily 

 be considered to be of military value to the enemy and 

 so rejected by the censor, and as I am not allowed to name 

 any places I might write about, I will merely give for 

 the readers of American Forestry some general infor- 

 mation regarding forest conditions in northern France. 

 Speaking generally, the artillery, machine gun and rifle 

 fire appear to have surprisingly little effect on broad- 

 leaved woods and seem to kill outright the coniferous 

 woods, if close up to the front line trenches. I have 

 seen many oaks, beeches, planes and other hardwoods 

 badly knocked about by shell fire and yet vigorous, while 

 Scotch pine, spruce and other conifers have died after 

 being worried a bit by splinters or shrapnel bullets. 

 Woods near the front line always come in for a good deal 

 of shelling as they are a cover from view by hostile 

 aircraft. It is easy to imagine quantities of engineers' 

 stores and ammunition depots and infantry dug-outs 

 under their cover, so a wood in range of hostile artillery 

 is by no means the safest place in which to loiter. I have 

 often seen a sudden, intense fire opened on a wood for 

 two or three minutes, apparently in the hope of catching 

 people in it unawares. I know one such wood which has 

 been shelled almost daily for many months, both with 



high explosive shells bursting on percussion and with 

 shrapnel, and the front of it swept at frequent intervals 

 with machine gun fire. If you were to visit it now, all 

 you would notice are the shell holes in the ground, which 

 are very numerous, and a few trees rather damaged by 

 direct hits or splinters. The wood, as such, has suffered 

 no damage whatever. 



I remember a blank piece of road embankment which 

 was some distance behind the German front line. It 

 seems to have offended the eye of some really cultured 

 enemy, for one day we found it had been neatly planted 

 with young pines about one metre apart. This irritated 

 my major, M. N. Ross, formerly of Biltmore, and now 

 landscape architect to the Government of Saskatchewan. 

 He thought it looked as if the German was behaving as 

 absolute owner and not merely as a sojourner in thus 

 beautifying the place. So the next day a shell from our 

 battery landed in the middle of it. We had to shell that 

 road and this was as good a point as any and shells some- 

 times drop short a few yards. Our shells make rather 

 a mess and that one left only three pines standing at the 

 edge of the bank. The damage was never repaired and 

 I fear that that tree lover, probably from South Germany, 

 regards us now as Philistines of the worst sort. 



I believe the Germans, taken all round, use far more 

 forest materials for their war work than we do, but that 



