I. 1. THE WHITE PINE. 65 



southern parts of Maine it has much diminished, and the lum- 

 ber has become of inferior quality. From the Penobscot and 

 other great rivers in the northern parts of that State, the expor- 

 tation is still immense; but the lumberers have to go every year 

 to a greater distance from the great water-courses, and to ascend 

 smaller streams and more remote lakes. The same thing is 

 happening in New York; and the day is evidently not far 

 distant, when the inhabitants of New England even, will have 

 to depend on Canada for this wood, unless measures are taken 

 to restore the pine forests on those millions of acres which are 

 suitable for no other use, while they are admirably adapted to 

 the production of various kinds of pine. 



The white pine is a tree of rapid growth. Where it has been 

 cultivated, in England and France, it has been found to increase 

 in height at the rate of from fifteen inches to three feet, each 

 year, for fifty or sixty years. A tree near Paris, thirty years 

 planted, is eighty feet high, with a diameter of three feet. By 

 observing the annual stages of limbs, it may be seen, that in 

 many parts of this State, it grows in height three or four feet a 

 year, and sometimes more. In Dalton, I measured an old white 

 pine, which was more than 100 feet high, and found its circum- 

 ference at the ground twelve feet eight inches, and at three feet, 

 ten feet nine inches. 



In 1809 or '10 a belt of pines and other trees was planted on 

 two sides of the Botanic Garden in Cambridge, to protect it 

 from the northwest winds. In the winter of 1S41 and '2, when 

 they had been growing thirty-one years, many of them were 

 carefully measured by myself, with the assistance of the skilful 

 and intelligent gardener, Mr. Carter. Ten of the white pines 

 exhibited an average of twenty inches diameter at the ground, 

 showing an annual growth of nearly two-thirds of an inch in 

 diameter. The two largest measured five feet seven inches in 

 circumference at the ground, and four feet eight inches at the 

 height of three feet. The average diameter at three feet was 

 sixteen inches and one-half, and at five feet, more than fifteen 

 and one-half inches. Rev. J. L. Russell gives me an account of a 

 white pine which grew in a rocky swamp in Hingham, which, 

 at the age of thirty-two years, gave seven feet circumference 

 10 ' 



