1628 



Canadian Forestry Journal, April, 1918 



of the tree has been taken for other 

 and more profitable uses. 



Here, then, was the situation: 

 the miners of Canada knew that 

 they could get, say, 20 per cent, more 

 metal out of their ores by the oil 

 flotation process, but they could 

 not get United States pine oil in 

 practicable quantities; how were they 

 going to get that oil? 



Some of the mining companies 

 did experiment and got some valuable 

 results, but, after all, as some of 

 them pointed out, the business of 

 a miner is mining and not experi- 

 menting, and an appeal was made 

 to the Minister of the Interior to 

 have the Forestry Products Lab- 

 oratojies of the Forestry Branch 

 take up the investigation. This re- 

 quest was granted, and the Forestry 

 Branch secured a Canadian chemist 

 w^ho had some experience in wood 

 distillation and set him to work 

 on the project. 



Eight Months Investigation 



People wonder at the hundreds 

 of experiments an investigator like 

 Mr. Edison makes in investigating 

 a big problem, but that is the way 

 of the modern laboratory, and the 

 hunt for a Canadian pine oil was 

 no exception. In the eight months 

 the special investigator was at work, 

 he searched through the available 

 literature in technical libraries, 

 traveled through the northern 

 Ontario mining region, visited the 

 mines where the oil flotation process 

 was in operation, and conducted 

 "runs" in the experimental plants 

 set up by the mining experimenters. 

 Another line of study was that 

 of the hardwood distillation plants 

 in Canada. These plants do not 

 use pine or other resinous wood 

 and do not attempt to make pine 

 oil, but the processes are analogous 

 and the result of this study was, 

 as will be seen, advantageous both 

 to mining and to the hardwood 

 distillation industry. And in the 

 meantime and in between and all 

 the time scores of tests and ex- 

 periments were going on to try all 

 kinds of pine and other wood oils 

 to discover those having the right 



"collecting" and "frothing" prop- 

 ties. 



Some of the facts brought out 

 in this investigation were highly 

 illuminative. For instance, it was 

 found that in the United States 

 between fifty and sixty companies 

 had started into the distillation of 

 resinous wood and of these only 

 about half a dozen remain, the rest 

 having made sad failures of the 

 attempt. This is where governments 

 can very effectually help industry 

 by doing the experimenting and 

 allowing private concerns to turn 

 out the product on the lines dis- 

 covered to be most successful. 



But, harking back to pine oil, 

 the investigator found that the old 

 red pine stumps standing thick on 

 "pine plains" in eastern Canada, 

 like those on which Camp Borden 

 is located near Barrie, Ontario, would 

 produce the oil; so would the stumps 

 of the yellow pine trees of British 

 Columbia. 



The Testing Stage 



He extracted the oil and then 

 the question was whether it would 

 work as well as the oil from the 

 Southern States. Not being a 

 mineralogist, he could not handle 

 that part, but here another de- 

 partment of the Government — the 

 Department of Mines — came into 

 the arena, and as fast as the Forest 

 Products Laboratories made, mixed 

 and combined the oils they were 

 tested in the ore-dressing station 

 at Ottawa on the ores produced 

 in Cobalt mining camps. These com- 

 bined experiments showed that as 

 good an oil as that from the Southern 

 States could be produced in Canada, 

 but they showed that in any event 

 it w^ould be a very expensive article, 

 because it was present in such small 

 quantities in the trees and because 

 it left in its manufacture a whole 

 train cf by-products for which there 

 is no market in Canada. Whether 

 the manufacture of pine oil is a 

 profitable industry for Canada is 

 very doubtful, but the discovery 

 that pina oil will always be expensive 

 was discounted by another one, which 

 is that certain creosote oils, at present 



