606 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. YOL. XXXIX. No. 1008 



tion plan put into force. Centers of insect 

 and fungus damage will be located and timber 

 will be marked so that during the coming win- 

 ter tbe park employees will be busy removing 

 the dead, diseased and undesirable specimens. 

 A forest nursery will be developed and active 

 reforestation begun in 1914. 



That balsam fir, a tree which a few years 

 ago was considered of little value, is now in 

 demand for pulp wood, is the statement made 

 by the Department of Agriculture in a bulle- 

 tin just issued on the subject. This demand 

 has been brought about, says the department, 

 by the enormous expansion of the pulp indus- 

 try during the past two decades, with its pres- 

 ent consumption of three and a quarter million 

 cords of coniferous wood and the consequent 

 rise in the price of spruce, the wood most in 

 demand for paper-making. In addition, the 

 department goes on to say, balsam has begun 

 to take the place of spruce for rough lumber, 

 laths and the like, as the price of the latter 

 wood has risen. The chief objection to the 

 use of large amounts of balsam fir in the 

 ground-pulp process of paper-making is said 

 to be due to the so-called pitch in the wood, 

 which injures the felts and cylinder faces upon 

 which the pulp is rolled out. Balsam fir does 

 not have a resinous wood, and the material 

 which gums up the cylinder probably comes 

 from grinding balsam under conditions 

 adapted to spruce wood. Yet from ten to 

 twenty-five per cent., and possibly more of 

 balsam can be used in ground pulp without 

 lowering the grade of the paper produced. It 

 is known that with balsam logs left lying in 

 water over a season this drawback practically 

 disappears. In chemical pulp, produced 

 through the action of acids, these acids are 

 known to dissolve the pitch, and any amount 

 of balsam can be used, though some claim 

 that too much balsam in the pulp gives a 

 paper that lacks strength, snap and char- 

 acter. At the present time, balsam fir fur- 

 nishes about six or seven per cent, of the 

 domestic coniferous wood used by the coun- 

 try's pulp industry. The tree itself consti- 

 tutes, numerically, about twenty per cent, of 

 the coniferous forest in northern New York 



and Maine, and is abundant in many parts of 

 New Hampshire, Vermont, and in the swamps 

 of northern Michigan, northern Wisconsin and 

 Minnesota. It readily reforests cut-over areas, 

 and attains a size suitable for pulp wood in 

 a short time. Under present methods of cut- 

 ting, balsam fir is said to be increasing in our 

 second-growth forests at the expense of red 

 spruce, and with the gradual decline in the 

 supply of the latter wood the fir will become 

 more and more important commercially. 



VNIVEBSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS 

 The faculty of the graduate school of Cor- 

 nell University has voted to recommend to the 

 board of trustees that Dr. J. E. Creighton, 

 professor of logic and metaphysics, be elected 

 dean to succeed Dr. Ernest Merritt whose 

 resignation takes effect in June. The recom- 

 mendation by the faculty is virtually equiva- 

 lent to election. Two years ago President 

 Schurman, in a report to the trustees, pro- 

 posed that the faculties of the graduate school 

 and the college of arts and sciences be per- 

 mitted to choose their own deans and the 

 trustees approved the suggestion. Last year 

 the faculty of the college of arts and sciences 

 did select a dean, in the person of Dr. E. L. 

 Nichols, professor of physics. 



Dr. George L. Streeter, professor of anat- 

 omy in the medical department of the Univer- 

 sity of Michigan, has been appointed professor 

 of embryology in the Carnegie Institute of 

 Embryology, of the Johns Hopkins Medical 

 school. 



Professor Charles McMillan, professor of 

 civil engineering at Princeton University 

 since 1875, has retired and been appointed 

 professor emeritus. 



David Camp Rogers, Ph.D., associate pro- 

 fessor of psychology at the University of 

 Kansas, has been appointed professor of psy- 

 chology at Smith College. 



Mr. Wilfred Jevons has been appointed 

 junior lecturer and demonstrator in physics, 

 and Mr. A. E. Barnes lecturer in materia 

 medica, pharmacology and therapeutics at 

 Sheffield University. 



