After extensive and elaborate experiments by the United States Government, it has been discovered that cellulose in considerable quantities may be extracted from corn stalks, and the industry promises to grow to gigantic proportions almost at once. Cellulose, as is well known, is the essential constituent of the frame-work or wall membrane of all plant cells. It is a secretion from the contained protoplasm, but in the advancing growth of the plant the walls become incrust-ed with resin, coloring matter, etc. It composes the cells of a honeycomb. Cellulose, by reason of its peculiar properties, is being largely introduced into shipbuilding, as, due to its property of swelling rapidly when wet, it prevents leakage through holes below water line. Up to the present century the only available material from which cellulose for this purpose could be prepared in sufficient quantities was the cocoanut shell. The ground fiber of the cocoanut shell, with a small percentage of the original fiber, constituted the cellulose of commerce.