SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
kinds whose supply is becoming exhausted, and general improve- 
ment in the technical processes of converting wood into: other forest 
products or increasing the yield of by-products from wood. 
It is largely under the pressure of the economic necessity of finding 
a remedy for the growing area of idle forest land that investigations 
into the possibility of converting it into productive land were under- 
taken by many States and associations, as for instance, the Southern 
Pine Association. The Southern Pine Association has recently con- 
tributed 10,000 dollars to the National Research Council to investigate 
the possibilities of cut-over pine land for timber production. This 
work is now in charge of a forestry committee of the Council, and is 
well under way. The Federal Government, in its timber operations on 
the national forests, is trying to solve, through several forest experiment 
stations in the west, the problems of perpetuation of the forest after 
cutting by natural means, and by planting up areas destroyed by fire 
which cannot be brought back into productivity by natural seeding 
from the older trees. Some of the wood-using industries, although not 
_carrying on forest investigations by themselves, are contributing to some 
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extent, and are keenly interested in the work of the Forest Products 
Laboratory at Madison, which is solving the many problems of wood 
utilization, prolonging the life of the material by preservative treat- 
ment, increasing the sources of the available products, and discovering 
new substitutes for valuable kinds which can now be obtained only with 
great difficulty, and at high prices. Forest research, although: still 
young in this country, has already proved its effectiveness. A few 
examples may be cited as an illustration. Thus the discovery of the 
fact that the seed of western white pine—the most valuable specie of 
our western forests—has a tendency to lie over in the duff for a number 
of years and germinate after the timber is cut off, and the ground is 
exposed to heat and sun, has resulted in modifying the timber cutting 
on the national forests. Instead of leaving 25 per cent. of the total 
stand as a means of securing natural reproduction, the amount of 
timber left now is only 10 per cent. This is left more as an insurance 
against subsequent fires than as a means for re-seeding the cut-over 
land, which is now dependent upon the seed stored in the ground. The 
reduction of 15 per cent. in the amount of standing timber, which has 
an average stand of about 25,000 board feet to the acre, is nearly 4,000 
board feet, or at the minimum price of 4 dollars per 1,000, is a net 
gain of 16 dollars per acre. There are about 850,000 acres of western 
white pine land which, when cut over, under the new method of marking 
timber, would represent a gain of nearly 14,000,000 dollars to the 
Government, as against the old method of cutting. 
For years a greater part of western Nebraska was known as the 
Great American Desert. Aside from a few ranches along the river 
valleys and low-lying land close to lakes, the land was used for grazing 
of long-horned cattle that were trailed across the country from Texas, 
and then sold in the fall of the Missouri River markets. Grazing, how- 
ever, was so poor that the business proved unprofitable, and twenty 
years ago there was very little use made of the sand hills. In 1902 
206,000 acres of this desert were set aside by presidential proclama- 
tion for raising timber. In 1903 the Government established its first 
plantation. After many failures in the struggle with adverse climatic 
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