THE BUG-HUNTERS

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 69, 14 December 1935, Page 27

THE BUG-HUNTERS

Tests That Mean LifeSaving SCIENCE AND TIMBER Government “War” on Pests Fifteen years’ intensive research work by a small group of Government scientists in a quiet corner of Buckinghamshire lies behind a little heard-of-fight that is to-day being successfully waged against fungi and insects inflicting vast damage on timber and the timber trade of Great Britain (writes a correspondent of the London “Observer.”) In that same Government laboratory new uses are being found for timber and new Empire timbers and others found for old uses.

Architects and building contractors who, odd as it seems, have had for many years to rely on the figures of strengthtests for timbers worked out by Thomas Laslett, one-time Timber Inspector to the Admiralty, in the '6o’s and ’7o's of last century, are now being supplied with scientillcdlly-tabulated figures which enable them not only to effect unsuspeetedly large economies in building construction, but to know to decimalpoint accuracy the qualities of strength and durability of the timber they wish to employ.

Exporters of goods to foreign countries can now have specimens of their packing-cases artificially "man-hand-led.” dropped from heights anti tested for faults before being shipped abroad. Cabinet-makers are learning—often to their own amazement —that in the hands of modern high-pressure mechanism timber can be bent and twisted into any of those curves so fantastically indulged in by th e manufacturers of steel furniture. New Empire Supplies. Almost every week new Empire timbers are being tested with a view to classifying them as substitutes for certain increasingly scarce European hardwoods, thus opening up a vast new geography of world-sources of timber supplies. AH this and much more is being done at a little-known but liighly-iniportant branch of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research —the Forests Products Research Laboratory at Princes Risborough. Buckinghamshire, where the first summer school of its kind has just come to an end. ■ The laboratory was founded in 1920, and now covers several acres, including an "Experimental Graveyard” where hundreds of timber posts stand forlornly half buried in the groundexperiments in the elaborate testing of wood preservatives. It is impossible to do more than hint at the enormous field of timber research that is being covered at Princes Risborough from experiments with gigantic mechanical saws and planing machines and hydraulic presses exerting pressure up to 75,0001 b.. to others visible only through a powerful microscone. In. the laboratories, for instance, the privileged visitor may watch the war that is being waged against, among others, the Pinhole Borer, the Longhorn Beetle, and the Powder Post Beetle. No one at Princes Risborough talks in a hushed voice about the Death Watch Beetle. A Serious Enemy. A much more serious enemy is the Lyctus, commonly known as the Powder Post beetle, from the devastating way its larvae can reduce timber to a fine powder. This insect, which enjoys, among other dishes, a diet of tennis rackets and golf club shafts, came to England in increased numbers from the United States after the war, when enormous held-up stocks of timber were released for shipment abroad. It has since then seriously affected British timber yards. In the words of an official report, these Powder Postbeetles “are by far the most economically important timber insects in this country,” and "cause extensive losses to all branches of the hardwoodusing- industries.” The laboratory has, however, now conceived plans for concerted action -against this pest which, if universally adopted, may mean its early extermination in British timberyards. Death Watch Beetles are actually bred and cultivated at Princes Risborough. and kept for observation purposes in small glass-covered boxes. These beetles normally take five or six years to evolve from the grub stage; in the laboratories they are brought to maturity within 11 months. It has now been discovered that they do not breed in sound timber, and in the case of unsound timber attacked by them a new method of extermination is .being evolved by means of highly-poisonous mimic gas attacks. The most disturbing laboratory here is that in which great beams are,put under enormous hydraulic pressure up to 75.000’.b. until they show signs of splinteringHere. too. a mechanical "boot,” heavily hob-nailed. , stumps up. and down a section of parquet flooring of various woods forlOO hours at a stretch to determine the woods’ suitability for floo.iing purposes. <• ’ Impact Tests. _ . In this room impaC-Ltests by means of- ingeuiotts • mechanical devices nnknown- to the ordinary engineer, but probably suspected by Air, Heath Robinson. are applied to timber fqr, aeioplane struts and fuselage work, and heavy mechanical hammers are dropped on beams from varying heights of 2ftupward. In a corner stands a iaige drum containing a packing case which, when slowly revolved, reproduces the si rain and ’shocks to which Hie ease may be subject on long journey by ship and rail. And in what is bleakly .labelled the "Wood Structure Section.” in a Ivqg room lined with slim, labelled blocks of smne 9000 species of timber aiid' locking foi’ all t(ie world like a great library, of books.-you will find them peering through microscopes it wafers of wood no more than l-25.000th of an inch thick, in the hopes of making new discoveries about the lives and deaths of trees, which, strange though it seems, may further secure the safety of countless miners, motorists, steamship, and aeroplane passengers and others in the remotest parts of the world.