Geographic Notes 



3 2 9 



St Louis and San Francisco, the Mis- 

 souri, Kansas and Texas, the Northern 

 Pacific, and the Burlington in the South 

 and West. 



The scarcity of valuable timbers is 

 felt by no class of consumers more 

 keenly than by the railroads, which 

 use every year 110,000,000 ties merely 

 to renew those worn out and decayed. 

 The price of timbers has risen in some 

 instances to a figure which makes their 

 use prohibitive ; in other cases the sup- 

 ply is so nearly exhausted that the roads 

 have been compelled to look about for 

 new timbers. 



The Bureau of Forestry has been 

 called on to assist in solving the diffi- 

 culty, and has come forward with the 

 very practical and simple suggestion 

 that the railroads, instead of continuing 

 to use expensive, high-grade timbers 

 for such a low-grade purpose as that 

 of railroad ties, shall use the cheaper 

 woods. For example, to the complaint 

 of the New York Central that it finds 

 it more and more difficult to secure 

 longleaf pine ties from Georgia at the 

 price it can afford to pay, the Bureau 

 suggests that the road use the beech, 

 maple, and birch of the Adirondacks. 

 The complaint that the timbers rot very 

 quickly when laid in the ground is an- 

 swered by the suggestion that they 

 should be seasoned and preserved, just 

 as beech is seasoned and preserved in 

 France. The Great Eastern Railroad 

 of France has succeeded in making 

 beech ties last 35 years by impregnating 

 them with tar oils. The unseasoned 

 longleaf pine ties used by the New York 

 Central last only five years ; and the 

 beech, if laid green, without seasoning 

 or preserving, would in many cases 

 last no more than three years. The 

 substance of the proposal which the 

 Bureau has made to the railroads, and 

 which the railroads have thought so 

 well of as to adopt, is that experiments 

 be made to determine whether cheaper 

 timbers may be treated with preserva- 



tives at a cost so low and be made to 

 last such a long time that it will pay 

 to substitute them for the more expen- 

 sive timbers now employed. 



The railroads have thought so well of 

 these ideas that they will not only carry 

 on under the Bureau's direction the* nec- 

 essary experiments in seasoning and pre- 

 serving, but have engaged the Bureau's 

 help in learning where cheap timbers for 

 ties may be obtained. In other words, 

 the railroads have decided that if they 

 can be convinced that it will pay to sea- 

 son and preserve cheap timbers for ties, 

 they will acquire large areas of timber 

 lands on which they will grow their own 

 trees, cut their own ties, and thus be 

 assured of a steady supply. This means 

 that some of the great railroads of the 

 country are in a fair way to practice for- 

 estry on a very large scale, and to em- 

 ploy a great many foresters. 



Work of a similar nature to the rail- 

 road experiments is being carried on for 

 the American Telephone and Telegraph 

 Company, which used last year 150,000 

 telephone poles and 3,000,000 feet of tim- 

 ber in cross-arms. Seasoning experi- 

 ments are being conducted on chestnut 

 telephone poles near Harrisburg, Pa., 

 and on cedar poles near Wilmington, 

 N. C. 



Important and valuable as this work 

 is to the railroad and telegraph compa- 

 nies, it is of far greater importance and 

 value to the country at large. The use 

 of cheaper timbers for railroad ties is in 

 several ways an economic saving; it re- 

 lieves the high-grade timbers of a part 

 of the heavy demand that is being made 

 upon them, opens a market for timbers 

 for which there is now little sale, and 

 affords splendid opportunities for con- 

 servative management of timber lands. 

 The work is being prosecuted accord- 

 ing to the regular cooperative system of 

 the Bureau, by which the field and trav- 

 eling expenses of the Bureau's agents 

 are paid by those for whom the work is 

 done. 



