ngs
in our annual consumption of wood can be brought about. As
matters now stand, approximately 25 per cent. of the tree in the
forest is lost or wasted in the woods, 40 per cent. at the mills,
5 per cent. in seasoning the lumber and from 5 to 10 per cent. in
working the lumber over into the manufactured articles. This new
method of construction which makes full use of odds and ends and
slabs and edgings offers a profitable way to make use of the 75
per cent. of material which now is wasted.

The vast importance of preserving our forests is emphasized when
one stops to consider the great number of uses to which wood is
put. In addition to being used as a building material, wood is
also manufactured into newspaper and writing paper. Furthermore,
it is a most important product in the making of linoleum,
artificial silk, gunpowder, paints, soaps, inks, celluloid,
varnishes, sausage casings, chloroform and iodoform. Wood
alcohol, which is made by the destructive distillation of wood,
is another important by-product. Acetate of lime, which is used
extensively in chemical plants, and charcoal, are other products
which result from wood distillation. The charcoal makes a good
fuel and is valuable for smelting iron, tin and copper, in the
manufacture of gunpowder, as an insulating material, and as a
clarifier in sugar refineries.

It is predicted that the future fuel for use in automobile
engines will be obtained from wood waste. Ethyl or "grain"
alcohol can now be made from sawdust and other mill refuse. One
ton of dry Douglas fir or southern yellow pine will yield from
twenty to twenty-five gallons of 95 per cent. alcohol. It is
estimated that more than 300,000,000 gallons of alcohol could be
made annually from wood now wasted at the mills. This supply
could be increased by the use of second-growth, inferior trees
and other low-grade material.

CHAPTER XVIII

WOOD FOR THE NATION

Westward the course of forest discovery and depletion has taken
its way in the United States. The pine and hardwood forests of
the Atlantic and New England States first fell before the bite of
the woodman's ax and the sweep of his saw. Wasteful lumbering
finally sapped the resources of these productive timberlands.
Shift was then made farther westward to the Lake States. Their
vast stretches of white pine and native hardwoods were cut to a
skeleton of their original size. The lumbering operations then
spread to the southern pine belt