University of Idaho School of Forestry - Forester Yearbook (Moscow, ID)

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16 example, in the production of naval stores fturpentine, pine oil, rosinj, maple syrup, rubber, tung oil, and many other products the woody structure of the tree is not utilized, but materials which are naturally produced by the tree and only require collection are used. Only those industries which utilize the Woody struc- ture will be considered here. CHARCOAL INDUSTRY CENTURIES OLD Although most chemical industries depend- ing upon wood as raw material are of recent development, there are some which originated several centuries or more ago. The most notable example is the destructive distillation of wood. However, the modern wood distilla- tion industry is a far cry from the charcoal making of five centuries ago. The old collier THE IDAHO FORESTER duction of acetic acid, acetone and wood alcohol. The pulp and paper industry is the greatest of the chemical forest industries and is the seventh ranking industry in the United States. Paper was invented by the Chinese in 105 A. D. and was made by hand from that time until after the middle of the past century. With the advent of the chemical processes for producing pulp from wood, the paper industry passed, in a relatively short time, from making a few hundred hand sheets per day to mills produc- ing 400 tons of paper for the same period of time. Paper is a thin sheet of plant fibers made by separating the individual fibers in the plant and then felting them together again in a uni- form sheet. Since wood is composed mainly The Wood Conversion Laboratory Contains Considerable Modern Equipment and Machinery for Instructional Purposes. obtained only charcoal from wood and thereby unwittingly burned and wasted the most valu- able products. At present, thanks to research, chemicals which were formerly lost in gases and smoke are now the most important prod- ucts of wood distillation. The more im- portant chemical products are acetic acid, wood alcohol, acetone and tar oils which rind wide industrial uses as solvents, for the manu- facture of one form of rayon, in preparing formaldehyde, synthetic resins, various druys, dyes, perfumes, and other valuable products. The wood distillation industry is constantly undergoing radical development and improve- ment in economy of manufacture, in yield of products, in the refinement of products and the recovery of by-products. In the more re- cent plants sawdust and chipped waste wood may be fed continuously to the distillation re- torts, effecting both economy and improved production. The refinement of the products is carried out in complex modern chemical en- gineering equipment. It is believed that with these improvements the industry will be able to compete successfully with the synthetic pro- of fiber-shaped cells it is an excellent raw material for paper. But in order to separate these cellulose fibers the cementing substance, lignin, must be removed. The gradual accumu- lation of research on Wood during the nine- teenth century led to the discovery of the present-day pulping process in which the lig- nin is dissolved from the Wood, thereby freeing the fibers. WOOD A RAW MATERIAL FOR TEXTILES As in other modern industries, research is constantly bringing about improvements. The actual pulping processes are still but imper- fectly known and are the center of very in- tensive research. The number of forest spe- cies which may be used for pulp is gradually being enlarged. Also improved pulping proc- esses and the development of pulp refining methods is broadening the market for pulp. Highly purihed wood pulp is competing to a greater extent with cotton as a raw material for rayon and other cellulose products. A new industry which is related to the pulp and paper industry is the manufacture of fiber LContinued on page 495

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THE PLACE OF CHEMICAL RESEARCH IN FORESTRY E. C. JAHN Associate Professor of Forestry THE proper utilization of the products of the forest is just as important a part of the science of forestry as is the growing of timber. Forest utilization has concerned it- self primarily with lumber and timbers which, both in quantity, as represented by board feet of wood consumed, and in value, are our most important forest products. These products possess in general the properties of the origi- nal wood in the tree and, because of these properties, such as strength, lightness, elas- gm: WEB static complex structure is still the subject of intensive investigation. Woon OFFERS MUCH STUDY Neither botanically nor chemically is wood a homogeneous substance. Botanically it is made up of a variety of cells, most of which are spindle-shaped fibers about 1 mm. long in hardwoods and 1.5 to 9 mm. long in conifers or softwoods. Communication exists between most of the cells in wood by means of pits in tk The lfVood Conversion Laboratory is oi Valuable Addition to the Idaho School of Forest'ry. ticity, and workability, they are particularly useful for structural purposes. There are, however, many very important and valuable forest products which no longer resemble the wood from which they were ob- tained. The wood is the raw material for these products which are manufactured principally by chemical processes. Wood as a raw ma- terial is becoming increasingly important as a basis for chemical and technological proc- esses which furnish man with many useful articles. First let us briefiy consider the raw ma- terial-wood. Wood is organic tissue pro- duced by biochemical and physiological proc- esses and is, therefore, a complex substance. A knowledge of the chemistry of wood is fun- damental to its utilization by any of the chemi- cal processes. Of the mechanism of the growth and synthesis of the various components of wood we know practically nothing, Our knowledge of wood is only of the product as has been elaborated by the plant, and yet this their walls. The cells are all cemented to one another by a common medial layer known as lamella. This cementing layer or the middle matrix is made up of a complex material not clearly defined, and known as lignin. The cell walls are composed mostly of a strong tough substance, cellulose, together with hemi- celluloses and some lignin. The cell wall en- closes a lumen or central cavity which con- tains extraneous material, since these cavities function in the storage of food, the transporta- tion of food and water, and in other life proc- esses. The scope of this paper does not permit dis- cussion of the chemistry of these major com- ponents of wood. Although the chemistry of wood still offers many baffling problems, the gradual unfolding of these mysteries adds to human knowledge and in turn to the increased usefulness of wood to man. There are several important chemical in- dustries which depend upon the forest for their raw material and yet do not utilize wood. For

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PLANNING A FOREST FOR THE UNIVERSITY OE IDAI-IO E. A. SHERMAN United States Forest Service WHEN Dean F. G. Miller, of the School of Forestry of the University of Idaho, turns from his desk and looks out of his ohice window, his eyes rest on the timbered south slopes of a range of hills known as the Moscow Mountains. These constitute a short secondary range running east and west almost at a right angle to and fairly well detached from the main mountain mass occupying the central and northern parts of the State. The most striking feature of the range, Moscow Moun- tain proper, is only 12 miles in an air line from the dean's ofiice. The area is unusually productive, with a fertility carried to it in wind-borne soils from the famous Palouse region. The total area comprises 65,753.62 acres and is divided naturally into two rather distinct units, the Moscow Mountain unit, con- taining 35,410.79 acres, and the Potato Hill unit of 30,342.83 acres. All the principal com- mercial forest types are well represented, with acreages as follows: white pine, 14,0803 pon- derosa pine, 20,0003 larch-fir, 28,7105 Douglas ir, 1,3905 cedar-white fir, 700. It would be hard, the dean believes, to find a more nearly ideal set-up for a university forest. To obtain this area for the Idaho School of Forestry as a field laboratory to be studied, protected, developed, and managed by his stu- dents has long been the dream of Dean Miller. Two steps toward the accomplishment of that ambition have recently been taken. In 1932 the Forest Development Company donated to the University about three thousand, six hun- dred and fifty acres of forest land on Moscow Mountain. This area is already in use by the forest school and forms a nucleus for the projected forest. The second step was taken on January 13, 1933, when Representative Burton L. French, of Idaho, introduced in Congress a bill which, if enacted into law, will enable the State to acquire for its university the entire forest area in question. The plan which passage of the bill will fur- ther is based upon the fact that the State of Idaho owns large acreages of land within the boundaries of the national forests in the State. The bill authorizes the Federal Gov- ernment to acquire privately owned lands within certain described sections in the Mos- cow Mountains region and extending north- eastward of that region to the Palouse division of the St. Joe National Forest and southward to Potato Hill fa landmark of some local prominencej. Boundary lines are to be so drawn as to exclude farm lands and settle- ments and all land having substantial agri- cultural potentialities. The Federal Govern- ment would acquire these lands with the ultimate object of exchanging them for an equal value of the lands owned by the State within the boundaries of national forests. It may take many years to round out the entire project, as a great many small owner- ships are involved. Meanwhile, the State and the Federal Government already own a part of the land. In addition to the tract donated to the University, the State owns 8,029 acres within the boundary limits of the two units, and the Federal Government before long will come into ownership of about 9,000 acres, 200 from the public domain and the balance from pending donations, making combined State and Federal holdings of approximately 20,000 acres. The terms of the final exchange transaction between the State and the Forest Service will be worked out after the Federal Government has completed the work of consolidation and the State authorities have been empowered to make such an exchange.-Forest Worker, March, 1933. Income From Recreational Sources New England's annual income from recre- ational sources amounts to S500,000,000 and, if this is considered as a 6 per cent return on a capital investment, it would place the cur- rent economic value of New England's recre- ational assets at about 8M billion dollars. The value of the recreational property in New England is placed at S550,000,000 and taxes amounting to 315,000,000 are paid on this property. The recreation dollar is spent as follows: Transportation, 20 cents, accommo- dations, 20 cents, retail stores, 25 centsg food, 21 centsg amusements, 8 centsg confections, 6 cents.-Jozwwzal of Forestry, March, 1933. Wood Stood Philip Lord, '33, completed his academic work the first semester this year and returned to his home in South Pasadena, California, just in time for the earthquake. He writes as follows: Practically all the serious damage occurred to brick buildings. I have been over a large part of the damaged area and in no case did I see any major damage to an all-wood struc- ture. Some of the wooden buildings were moved several feet from their foundations by the shock yet they did not fall. The lumber companies are advertising with the phrase, 'Wood Stood? Lumber will have no trouble holding its own as a building material in this section of the country, 17