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 

 and 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 



