108 OUR NATIONAL FORESTS 



prices. The discovery that Incense cedar was 

 valuable for making lead pencils caused the price of 

 this so-called "inferior" species to jump from an 

 average of $10 per thousand feet in logs f. o. b. 

 cars to as high as $16. White fir, a species re- 

 ligiously avoided by lumbermen in the woods, was 

 found to have special properties which make it 

 very valuable as a pulp wood. One mill in Cali- 

 fornia now uses annually upwards of 30,000 cords 

 of it for making paper. Lodgepole pine has been 

 shown to have a great value for telephone and tele- 

 graph poles when treated with preservatives. It 

 was found to be 12 per cent, stronger than Western 

 Red cedar, the standard pole timber, has a more 

 desirable taper and can be shipped for less money. 

 Many other cases could be cited from this and other 

 National Forest Districts. 



Forest Products Laboratory Experiments. 

 The work of the Forest Products Laboratory in- 

 cludes investigations on the mechanical properties 

 of wood; the physical and chemical characteristics 

 arid properties of wood ; air seasoning and artificial 

 drying of wood ; agencies destructive to wood ; wood 

 preservation ; wood distillation ; production of naval 

 stores; and the production of pulp and paper and 



