RESEARCH WORK INTO FOREST PRODUCTS. 
Research -Work into Forest Products 
in other Lands. 
By I. H. BOAS, M.Sc. 
Forest. products enter so largely into important industries that 
isolated investigations into their possibilities have been made in most 
forest countries for a considerable period. ‘This applies particularly to 
such industries as paper making, which consumes enormous quantities of 
timber. It is, however, only within the last decade or so that systematic 
investigation in centralized laboratories has been undertaken into the 
many other timber-using industries, and into possibilities of utilizing 
the varied minor products yielded by forests. 
In this work America has led the way, by the establishment of forest 
products laboratories, and also by enabling the staffs at the Forest Schools 
to undertake research. In some of these schools, for example, the staff 
is sufficient to enable each member to spend two terms in teaching and 
the balance of the year on investigation. This splendid arrangement 
keeps the staffs always up to date, and reacts most favorably on the 
teaching work. It also has resulted in much valuable research being 
carried out. 
For example, in the Forest School at Seattle, the staff has done 
valuable work in. timber preservation, timber seasoning, and in other 
directions. Some of the work is directed to specific problems affecting 
local industries, and some is of a more general character. Professor 
Grondal, of Seattle, has developed a method of seasoning low-grade 
timber in twenty-four hours, without causing any loosening of the 
knots. Such low-grade timber must be treated quickly, for its value 
would not bear the cost of the usual slower processes. At this Univer- 
sity there is also a complete timber testing laboratory, at which splendid 
work has been done, especially in demonstrating the possibilities of 
Douglas Fir (Oregon Pine). This investigation proved of particular 
value during the war, when stocks of seasoned spruce were unobtainable, 
and Douglas Fir was shown to be fit for purposes for which spruce had 
' been formerly considered essential. ‘There is a very beautiful Forestry 
Museum at the Seattle University, built of whole logs of this beautiful 
tree. The photographs which accompany this article illustrate the 
artistic effect of this unique building. : 
In the United States of America there are several other Forest Schools 
where similar research work is done, but the main investigations are 
centred at the Forest Products Laboratory at Madison, Wisconsin. This 
laboratory is under the control of the Federal Forest Service, but is 
attached to the University of Wisconsin, which provided the site and 
some of the buildings. The Laboratory is quite free from University 
control, but members of its staff give courses of lectures to students, and 
senior students can arrange to do research in the Laboratory. For a few 
years the institution had a staff of about forty, but this grew rapidly as 
its work became known, and during the period of the war 450 workers 
were busily engaged in laboratories oceupying ten large buildings. The 
83 
