Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 80.djvu/43

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houses present a very neat appearance. The roofs may be of slabs, shingles, slate, some of the latter being rather great flags of mica-schist, and in the poorer and older houses of turf. This turf often grows in a very flourishing manner, so that quite a crop of hay could be gathered from the roof. Farther south the houses are generally of the same type, but in the place of logs plank are used, from three to four inches in thickness. After my attention had been called to this point, I kept a lookout for ordinary boards, but the thinnest I saw were by actual measurement two and a half inches thick. From this almost wasteful use of lumber as it would seem to us, it follows that all Norwegian houses are very substantially built and one would imagine that they would be of rather slow-burning construction. The contrary seems to be the ease, for almost every town of any size has been repeatedly devastated by fire, so that old houses are by no means common, indeed most Norwegian cities have a decidedly modern appearance. The city of Bergen has a number of broad avenues, purposely kept open to prevent the spread of fires. It should be added that stone and brick are rapidly replacing wood in the larger cities, much reducing the fire risk. While large amounts of timber are used for building and still larger quantities are exported, by far the largest amount is used for wood pulp. Here comes into use Norway's enormous water-power, for the so-called mechanical pulp is most largely manufactured. All over southern Norway are these pulp mills, where the wood is disintegrated by rough stones, much like an ordinary mill-stone. The pulp is