AMERICAN FORESTRY 



317 



A LUMBERMAN'S VIEWPOINT 



A/T R. P. D. Camp, president of the Camp 

 Manufacturing Company, of Franklin, 

 Virginia, became a member of the Ameri- 

 can Forestry Association recently, and in 

 accepting membership, Mr. Camp, who is a 

 practical lumberman, whote about forestry 

 from a lumberman's standpoint. He said: 



"We are in receipt of your letter and 

 note you start by saying, 'We need your 

 help to perpetuate our forests.' 



"Well, I think the lumbermen, and not 

 only the lumbermen, but every American 

 citizen needs your help and needs co-opera- 

 tion from the Government. I note with 

 great interest the amount of virgin timber 

 in the United States today, and how fast 

 it is being cut out. It is alarming to think 

 how rapidly we are cutting out our timber 

 and doing nothing to try to conserve our 

 timber. There are a good many things 

 we could do to conserve our forests that 

 we do not, and especially along the At- 

 lantic Coast. 



"One great trouble with us is, our States 

 are taxing the lumbermen to such an ex- 

 tent that it is causing the lumbermen to 

 cut the timber as fast as they can because 

 they cannot afford to pay the enormous 

 tax that is put on them, and especially in 

 North Carolina at the present time. As 

 you know, if a man has property and it 

 is not yielding him a fair compensation, 

 he tries to turn it into other property that 

 will yield a fair compensation. Take to- 

 day with the enormous tax they are putting 

 on timber in North Carolina, a man is 



better off to put his money in United States 

 bonds than put it in timber. If we had 

 some law to put a minimum tax on cut-over 

 land or timber lands, then there would be 

 an inducement to owners of the land or 

 timber to hold same instead of cutting 



it off." 



WOOD IDENTIFICATION. 

 A SECTION of a telephone pole, about 

 eight inches high and the same in di- 

 ameter, sent unwrapped by parcels post 

 from Hawaii, is one of the curiosities of 

 the Wood Identification Department of the 

 Forest Products Laboratory at Madison, 

 Wisconsin. The poles of this wood had 

 given such remarkable service that the 

 sample was sent to Madison for identifi- 

 cation, the records having been lost which 

 would identify them during the years in 

 which they had been in service. It was 

 immediately recognized at Madison as of 

 Port Orford Cedar, which, of course, came 

 originally from our Northwest. 



In connection with the identification of 

 many hundreds of pieces of woods, some 

 of them small splinters, the Forest Products 

 Laboratory has failed only three or four 

 times in its exact determination of the 

 species and these failures have been in 

 foreign and rare woods. Some species 

 may be identified at once by a casual ex- 

 amination, but where several varieties are 

 very similar in appearance, a microscopic 

 examination of cell structure is necessary. 

 This is the only way by which some woods 

 may be positively identified. Samples from 

 woods of every section of the globe fill 



huge file cases at the Laboratory, some of 

 them being of exceeding beauty and in- 

 terest. A small block of lignum vitae from 

 South America, the heaviest Wood in the 

 world, feeling in the hand more like iron 

 than wood, is contrasted with a block of 

 similar size of the lightest wood in the 

 world, corkwood. 



IMPROVING WOODLANDS BY 



CUTTING 



T ACK of proper thinning and cutting is 



a common cause of woodlands being 

 unprofitable, according to a recent bulletin 

 entitled, "Making Woodlands Profitable in 

 the Southern States," issued by the United 

 States Department of Agriculture. Nature 

 usually overcrowds trees in a given space, 

 says this publication, and so steps should 

 be taken to give them sufficient light and 

 soil moisture to thrive and become profit- 

 able. By properly controlling the number 

 of trees on a tract it is possible to increase 

 their rate of growth and eventually their 

 size. Except for the production of cord- 

 wood, a few large trees on a given area 

 are usually more desirable than many small 

 ones. If possible, valuable kinds of wood 

 should be grown in preference to common 

 woods which bring lower prices. Wood- 

 lands in this country, as a rule, contain 

 many crooked, forked, and diseased trees 

 which should be replaced by straight, sound 

 ones. Soon after a cutting trees show 

 an increased growth and the whole wood- 

 land rapidly increases in value by the elimi- 

 nation of inferior trees. 



BECOME A MEMBER 



Any person may become a member or tne American Forestry Association 

 upon application and payment or dues. 



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