Canadian Forestry Journal, Maij, 1!>J 



111 



I Reforesting Norway With Douglas Fir 1 



i I 



Douglas (ir is reconimended 1)\' 

 Anton E. Smith, chief forester a I 

 Stavanger, for the reforestation of 

 western Norway, whose former weal 111 

 of oak forest was exhausted hundreds 

 of years ago. Mr. Smith is just re- 

 turning to Norway after a year's 

 study of American soft woods for the 

 Norwegian government. He spent 

 most of his time in Oregon, Wash- 

 ington, British Columbia and Alaska. 

 The climate of western Norway is 

 very similar to that of the states of 

 the Pacific Northwest. Accordinglv, 



Mr. Smith recommends Douglas fir, 

 which, he believes, if planted in Nor- 

 way, will attain merchantable size 

 in about 80 years. 



Norway has been cutting very 

 heavily during that last decade, and 

 the government has taken effective 

 steps to safeguard the nation's timber 

 supply, both by encouraging refor- 

 estation and by limiting the cutting 

 to trees above 6% inches in diameter, 

 measured five feet from the ground. 

 Both pine and spruce are employed 

 for paper making, the principal use 

 to which timber is put. 



Hungrp? Trp Shredded Birch-0! 



Some suggestive experiments have 

 been recently carried out in Germany 

 by G. Habeiiandt, partly under offi- 

 cial auspices, on the possibility of 

 utilizing wood as food for animals 

 and man. The first experiments were 

 made .on a sheep, in a respiration 

 chamber, for the purpose of deter- 

 mining the digestibility and nutritive 

 value of birch wood. The trees were 

 felled in the early spring, and the 

 trunks, measuring four to six inches 

 in diameter, were reduced to very 

 small chips in a paper mill. Micro- 

 scopic examination showed that the 

 wood was very finely divided, so that 

 the membranes of nearly all the cells 

 were destroyed, while the cell con- 

 tents had been almost all removed 

 by the water used in the preparation 

 of wood. Thus the residue consisted 

 chiefly of cellular membrane. The 

 wood was fed in combination with 

 other foods. Good results were ob- 

 tained, both as to digestibility and 

 nutritive value. Apparently the rea- 

 son why previous experiments on the 

 same subject had not been successful 

 was that the wood was not cut up fine 

 enough and its cells were not thor- 



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oughly torn. The experiments were 

 repeated by Prof. Rubner on a dog, 

 the same wood ration being fed 

 with meat, and the results w^ere 

 also successful. Haberlandt believes 

 that man is capable of digesting finely 

 ground birch wood, and that it might 

 replace rye or wheat to the extent of 

 ten or fifteen per cent, in bread mak- 

 ing. — ^Scientific American.) 



AEROPLANE FOR SURVEY 



A small aeroplane, to be used this 

 summer in survey and reconnoiter 

 work in the engineering summer 

 camp in Kittitas county, is being 

 constructed by J. W. Miller, assistant 

 professor of civil engineering at the 

 University of Washington. Mr. Mill- 

 er will complete his machine sometime 

 in May and if tests on the campus 

 show it to be successful, he will take 

 it to the camp. 



The machine will have a spread of 

 24 feet and is designed to carry the 

 aviator and 200 pounds of baggage. 

 A low power rotary motor will be 

 used in an attempt to get a slow speed 

 airship. 



