Danish experts were shown “paper” underclothing, jerseys, sheets, bandages, and horse blankets, but the cost of production of the cloth is said to be too high to allow its competing with cotton and woolen cloth under normal conditions.
MUNICIPAL FORESTRY.
Forestry can never appeal to individual enterprise on a large scale. Returns are too slow. As a national enterprise of the highest importance it is gaining recognition, and there is a tendency among some American cities to take advantage of its many possibilities. With the exception of the vicinity of the Great Lakes, the world’s largest reservoir of pure fresh water, cities must have water supplies from available drainage or watershed areas. These can be devoted to forestry with advantage from a sanitary point of view, and also with profit when the trees begin to mature. Where convenient, the forested area can also be made to serve as public parks. The city of Fall River, Mass., began in 1909 to plant trees in Watuppa Pond Reservation. There are 3,232 acres of land belonging to the municipality in a natural forest condition and 1,552 acres suitable for reforesting. The trees are supplied by the State Forestry Bureau. The Metropolitan Water Board, which represents Boston and other cities in this matter, has planted, chiefly in the Wachusetts Reservation, about 1,800 acres with forest trees. In six years the State forestry service has furnished to the cities of the State a sufficient number of trees to cover 1,481 acres, and it is estimated that 15,000 acres in city reservoir tracts have been put under some kind of forest treatment. Massachusetts has gone beyond the use of the watershed reservations for this purpose. An act was passed by the Legislature three years ago permitting cities to buy land to be kept distinctly as forests, quite aside from water purposes. There are now several of these city forests in existence.
Elsewhere in the United States the same tendency exists. In ten large and middling-sized cities forest domains aggregating over 150,000 acres are maintained, and it is probable that municipal forests comprise 250,000 acres. Newark, N.J., has a forest of 22,000 acres, and in time the whole of it may be scientifically forested. Hartford, Conn., has a forest property of 4,000 acres, which is being developed for timber production. Here are examples for Canadian cities. Winnipeg’s water development may be made to serve a double purpose. Even Toronto’s suburban ravines, though unsuited and unnecessary for water supply, might serve the dual purpose of timber production and park systems. Municipal trading has many critics, often unreasonable, but municipal reforesting should be made a possibility where Provincial authority is neglecting its duty in that regard and falling behind in the march of progress.—Toronto Globe.
PUBLISHERS TO MAKE PAPER.
Fifty newspaper publishers of Florida are considering establishment of a plant to manufacture paper from pulp of fibrous trees and bushes in that state, particularly palmetto. Investigations have shown fibrous material is of better quality than spruce pulp which is used in manufacture of newsprint.
In connection with the advance in paper issues, timber limits, which normally have a value of about $1,000 a square mile, have risen to $2,000 a square mile.