I. 1. THE PITCH PINE. 73 



young pines. These continue to grow for seven or eight years 

 under the shelter of the broom, the leaves of which annually 

 mingle with the soil and fertilize it. After this period, the pines 

 over- top the broom and often kill it by their shade. At the age 

 of ten or twelve years, they begin to thin the forest, to make tar, 

 and to get branches for continuing the process of sowing. In 

 about twenty years, they begin to cut down the trees to extract 

 \ the resin. These forests, situated on the downs along the sea, 

 protect, from the continual action of the west wind, the whole 

 space situated behind them, and thus, at the same time that 

 they themselves furnish an important product, they secure those 

 of the rest of the country." 



He ends the account by saying, that he has herborized for a 

 whole day in the forests sown by Bremontier on sand com- 

 pletely arid, and on which, before him, scarce a trace of vege- 

 tation could be seen. 



By pursuing, on the waste sands in many parts of this State, 

 the course which has been so successful in France, forests for 

 fuel and tar and lampblack, and perhaps for ship timber, may 

 be formed on land which is now not only utterly valueless but 

 in many places inconvenient and dangerous. The plant to be 

 selected to protect the young pine may be the sweet fern, 

 (Comptonia), or perhaps the very broom which has been used 

 in France, as its seed could be easily imported, and there can 

 be no doubt that it would grow on this side of the Atlantic as 

 well as on the other. 



Another use to be made of the pitch pine, is one to which the 

 Scotch pine, which it much resembles, is put in England, that 

 of serving as nurse to tender deciduous trees. 



There is a circumstance about the pitch pine which I have 

 never observed in any other tree of this family, and believe to be 

 peculiar. Its stump throws up sprouts the spring after the stem 

 has been felled. These continue to flourish, with apparent 

 vigor, for several years, but I have never seen them attain any 

 considerable height. The fallen trunk itself throws out sprouts 

 in the succeeding summer ; and the bundles of leaves of both 

 are remarkable for issuing from the axil of a single leaf, in the 

 same manner as is observed in the young plant. 

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