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14 BULLETIN 1003, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
burning and the practicability of recovering these products by this 
method, and (0) the yield and value of products obtainable from 
yellow-pine stumpwood throughout the State when subjected to re- 
_ tort distillation. 
The chief aim of the cooperative work was to determine the value 
for distillation purposes of western yellow-pine stumps and such 
other logging or land-clearing waste in the State of Idaho as might 
lend itself to the treatment. The abundance of yellow-pine waste 
is readily inferred from the volume of such lumber sent to market 
from mills throughout the State, and the relative abundance of yel- 
low-pine stumps in any section can be ascertained from timber-cruise 
records, supplemented by the proper volume tables. The quality of 
the stumps with respect to their resin content, on which depends 
their value for distillation purposes, however, can not be determined 
from such field or timber-cruise data. The results of careful field 
inspections have led to the conclusion that much of the western yel-_ 
low pine is of the relatively nonresinous or “bull pine” variety. 
Even the more resinous yellow-pine stumps varied so widely in their — 
resin content that it soon became apparent that field investigations 
were indispensable to a proper knowledge of the proportion in which ~ 
the various grades of stumps occur in the regions from which samples 
were collected. A knowledge of the conditions in the yellow-pine 
belt of the Atlantic and Gulf States made this all the more impera- 
tive, for the reason that the apparent preponderance of the lower 
grade of stumps clearly indicated that the profitable utilization by 
distillation of all yellow-pine stumps would be found impracticable, 
and that success in utilizing any of them would depend on a proper 
selection of material to be treated. 
From an agricultural standpoint the object of the work was to 
determine the practicability of reducing cut-over land clearing costs 
through recovery of by-products from the stumps. The extent to 
which distillation products from the stumps can be made to defray 
the cost of clearing such land obviously depends, among other things, 
on the total number of stumps to the acre, the number of these stumps 
suited to distillation purposes, the yield and value of the by-products, 
and, finally, the cost of recovering these by-products from the stumps 
. to be treated. The first of these probably can be fairly well estab- 
lished from timber-cruise records for regions ‘in which such data are 
available; the second is a combined field and laboratory problem; the 
third a goss and trade inquiry problem; and the fourth a field 
and chemical engineering problem. The work accordingly resolved 
itself into an investigation involving each of these closely related 
problems. 
