164. INDUSTRIAL USES OV WOOD. 



advantage. Cellulose, for instance, is used in making numerous 

 kinds of ornaments and furniture for dwelling-rooms. Even 

 casks, tubs, vases, laboratory and cooking utensils, are thus 

 made ; also boats and rafters, underground tubes for telephone 

 wires, oars, door-panels, *?cc. The spokes of railway-carriage 

 wheels have been replaced by frames which are tilled with 

 cellulose. Antiseptic cellulose of silver-fir wood is used for 

 surgical bandages. It is also used for carpets and wax-cloth, 

 and as packing-material, especially in packing gunpowder, and 

 for many other purposes. It is used for insulating electrical 

 conductors, and successful attempts have been made to spin 

 artificial silk from cellulose, and to use it as gun-cotton. As 

 compared with paper-making, however, these other uses of 

 wood-pulp are only of subordinate importance. 



Quite recently Wendenburg has attempted to utilize coniferous 

 cellulose and sawdust by means of dilute hydrochloric acid and 

 a boiling solution of common salt, as a fodder for cattle, to the 

 extent of 40 to 70 per cent., instead of straw or chaft'. This 

 method has not, however, met with much success. On the 

 other hand, the great scarcity of fodder, in 1893, has caused an 

 attempt to be made by Ramann to use green wood as fodder, and 

 this has proved much more promising than the former experi- 

 ment. The young twigs of broad-leaved trees up to 2 centi- 

 meters thick, which are known to be lich in reserve nutritive 

 material, are cut up into chafl' in a special machine, and pressed 

 into a fermenting mass. About h to 1 per cent, of malt is 

 then added, also some salt, and by damping it whilst fermenting, 

 the heat is kept up to 140' ¥., and it is then cooled and used as 

 fodder. This process converts the contained starch into sugar. 

 This material has been favourably experimented on in several 

 landed estates, and is considered equal to hay of average quality, 

 and better than straw, and is liked both by cattle and horses. 



3. Saic-I)ii!>t. 



Although saw-dust, which collects in large quantities at saw- 

 mills, is chiefly used as fuel, or as litter in cattle-stalls, or mixed 

 with coal-dust to make the well-known briquets, it is also used for 

 making water-tight parquetry floors, for sculptures, plates and 

 other articles.* [In N. America for illuminating wood-gas. — Tr.] 



• Laris, Haiulelsblatt fiir Waklcrzeugnissc, xi. No. 4, aud xii. No. 37. 



