April 3, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



505 



has been seeking proper uses for these trees 

 and has experimented in making pulp from 

 them at its pulp laboratory at Wausau, Wis- 

 consin, an auxiliary of the forest products 

 laboratory at Madison. The Wausau labora- 

 tory is equipped with standard machinery and 

 all experiments are carried out under condi- 

 tions which duplicate commercial practise. As 

 a final test of the value of some of these new 

 woods under practical conditions, arrange- 

 ments were made between the forest service 

 and the Herald to print some part of its edi- 

 tion on paper made from various woods that 

 showed promise as substitutes for spruce. 

 These woods were ground at the Wausau labo- 

 ratory; the product was then mixed with the 

 usual proportion of chemical pulp and made 

 into news print paper, rolls of which were 

 sent to New York for the experimental run. 



Settlers in western Kansas are cutting and 

 marketing soap weed, or Spanish bayonet, to 

 supply the demands of soap manufacturers, 

 according to a report recently received from 

 officers of the Kansas national forest. There 

 are various plants in the southwest locally 

 known as soap weed, called amole by the 

 Mexicans, but the one gathered by the Kansas 

 farmers, technically known as Yucca hacata, 

 a species with exceptionally large fruits, is the 

 most used. The soap manufacturers, how- 

 ever, utilize the tops or the roots. Manu- 

 facturers are paying $8 a ton for the plant at 

 the railway stations, while the estimated cost 

 of cutting, drying, baling and hauling ranges 

 from $5 to $6, depending upon the distance to 

 the railroad. Since a man can ordinarily get 

 out a ton a day, the gathering of the soap weed 

 affords an opportunity to secure a fair day's 

 wages at a time when other ranch activities are 

 not presssing. After cutting, the soap weed is 

 allowed to dry from 60 to 90 days and then is 

 baled up in the ordinary broom-corn baling 

 machine. For a long time this weed has been 

 made into a soapy decoction which the Indian 

 and Mexican women have used, particularly 

 for washing their hair, for which purpose it is 

 considered especially suited, since it contains 

 no alkali. Present-day soap manufacturers 

 use it for toilet and wool soaps. Its qualities 

 have been known for a long time, but the har- 



vesting of soap weed is just now becoming 

 commercially important. The industry is now 

 operating on lands adjacent to the Kansas 

 national forest and it is expected that the de- 

 mand will soon spread to that forest, some por- 

 tions of which bear an abundant supply of the 

 plant. There is a plentiful supply of it 

 throughout southern Colorado, Arizona, New 

 Mexico and Texas. Forest officers have con- 

 sidered this weed a nuisance, since it is the 

 nature of the plant to spread over extensive 

 areas and kill off other vegetation. It is par- 

 ticularly a pest on stock ranges. In line with 

 its policy of range improvement, the govern- 

 ment is anxious to rid the forage areas of all 

 such injurious plants, and it is the hope of the 

 forest officers that the commercial demand for 

 soap weed will soon reach such proportions that 

 it will not only take an otherwise useless pro- 

 duct, but also will eradicate it from areas 

 which could be utilized to better advantage for 

 the supplying of forage to cattle and sheep. 



It is generally recognized that boric acid in 

 considerable quantities is an original constitu- 

 ent in the waters and gases given off with 

 volcanic emanations. In fact, the Tuscan 

 fumaroles, in Italy, have been an important 

 commercial source of boric acid for a long 

 time, and in the past, possibly even to the 

 present time, almost all the boric acid brought 

 into the European market has been derived 

 from this source. There is abundant evi- 

 dence of the presence of boric acid in volcanic 

 emanations in many parts of the world. On 

 the other hand, boron is so rare a constituent 

 of rock-forming minerals that it forms an 

 almost inappreciably small percentage of the 

 earth's rock mass as a whole. A short study 

 of the borate deposits in Ventura County, 

 Cal., supplemented by more cursory examina- 

 tions of similar deposits in the vicinity of 

 Death Valley, has been made by Hoyt S. Gale, 

 of the United States Geological Survey, and a 

 new theory of the origin of the deposits of 

 colemanite, or borate of lime, in these regions 

 has been advanced by Mr. Gale in Professional 

 Paper 85, Part A, recently published by the 

 Survey. While this theory has not yet been 

 entirely proved, there is much in its favor 

 and it affords suggestions and a working basis 



