The Cordova daily times., 1921-10-05
SITKASPRUCE
 NOT INFERIOR
 ASTOQUALITY

item under the headline MT. Sumner Is Corrected":
 "J. J. Underwood, a Washington correspondent for the Seattle Times, writes to Railway and Marine News as follows:
 T note in the second column of the Sumner article: During the war it (Alaska spruce) was found suitable for airplane lumber etc.
 This must be typographical error Alaska spruce is absolutely unsuitable and useless for airplane purposes. Il know this positively. for investigated the subject very thoroughly during the war. Airplane stock must be ten feet long without a knot. This means that tree must have a length of at least ten feet without a limb In the Alaska spruce the limbs grow right from the butt to the top of the tree, and remem Der, that ten feet without knot is the minimum. Good airplane lumber is IS feet to 30 feet without knot
 I am not saying this to be critical, but to draw your attention to an error in an otherwise splendid article'"
 United States District Forester Charles H. Flory of Juneau takes is sue with Mir. Underwood in this mat ter, and has written the above publi- cation as follows:
 The writer of the above article eyi- dently had in mind the white spruce and black spruce of interior Alaska and not the Sitka or airplane spruce so widely distributed over southeast eru and southwestern Alaska. In order to correct any possible impression that the Sitka spruce in the regions indi- cated Is of inferior quality, I would like to call your attention to some facts regarding it.
 "Sitka spruce is the principal lmn- Der producing tree of Alaska. II reaches a diameter of to feet and height of 200 to 225 feet. The aver age tree cut for sawtimber is between 3 and feet in diameter and about 175 feet in height. It usually grows in mixture with western hemloCk and be- ing q light-demanding, or as fOresters say, an "intolerant" species, this char acteristic forces the tree as matter of survival to keep its top above the surrounding less light-demanding hem lock and causes it to lose it's side branches early through shading. These factors account for the great height and long. clean stem. It's shaftike body is a very distinguishing and well known characteristic to men who are familiar with the forests Of southeast ern Alaska.
 During the war most of the lumber mills in southeastern Alaska produced airplane material, the mill being opcr- ated principally for this class of stock from a timber unit containing mil. lion board feet purchased from tine forest service. One particular ship ment of 10000 board feet of airpIane material that I recall averaged the mill man $153 per thousand feet. In-' deed the government thought so high Iy of Alaska's spruce that President Wilson withdrew from all form of cn- try a block of 3l2 square miles of pub. lie land for the purpose of supplying timber for use in the construction of airplanes for the United States
 "The encouragement which the gov ernment is giving to the establishment of the paper industry in Alaska is not to the unsuitabiity of the spruce for lumber but to the fact that the paper industry offers an oportunity for much larger development and more complete use of all the forest resources available than the lumber industry II is likely. however, that the lumber in dustry. will later expand, but as an adjunct to the paper industry through diversion of the higher grade spruce logs to the sawmills.
 About 70 per cent of the estimated stand of timber on the national for ests of Alaska is western hemlock from 1 to feet in diameter This is not very valuable class of timber for lumber, especially as it would come into direct competition with Douglas fir from Oregon and Washington. but it ranks almost as highly for pulp stock as the spruce which forms l5I to 20 per cent of the forests.
 The depletion of the suitable tim