THE STORY OF WHITE PINE 



i?v Hu Maxwell 



WHITE pine's individuality is, 

 like Napoleon's, "grand, 

 original, and peculiar." The 

 wood is seldom mistaken 

 for any other, and the tree never. It is 

 a conspicuous feature of any landscape 

 where it occurs. No person who has 

 once made its acquaintance will ever 

 afterwards fail to recognize it at sight, 

 no matter how far away, provided the 

 characteristic arrangement of the 

 branches can be made out. The limbs 

 are set on the trunk in regular whorls 

 when the tree is young; and, though as 

 age comes on, many branches die and 

 the wheel-like form of the whorls is 

 broken, yet the general arrangement con- 

 tinues through life. Man}^ other trees 

 show the same arrangment in youth, 

 but few hold to it during life as tena- 

 ceously as does the white pine. It owes 

 its botanical name to that habit. Pinus 

 strobus means "whorled pine." The 

 order is wholly different from the tufted 



tops of the southern yellow pines; the 

 similar crowns of the Norway pine, or 

 the irregular branching of the western 

 yellow pine, or the slender and scat- 

 tered limbs of the jack pine which is 

 the white pine's associate in much of its 

 westward range. It is natural that 

 the white pine's tree form shotild im- 

 press those who see it for the first time 

 as well as those whose acquaintance 

 with it has been long and intimate. 

 In the well-known peom by Mrs. 

 Hemans, "The Landing of the Pil- 

 grims," the strongest feature in the 

 picture is caught in the first stanza: 



"The breaking waves dashed high 

 On a stern and rock-bound coast, 



And the woods against a stormy sky 

 Their giant branches tost." 



It is the picture of the lofty white 

 pines on the Massachusetts hills, their 

 huge and clear-cut limbs thrashed by 

 the December winds. 



Log Boom in St. Louis River. 



twenty-five thous.^nd pine logs in one bunch ready for the saw. boring beetles do not attack and fungus 

 does not discolor pine in the clear waters in minnesota. the picture represents a corner of the 



COLQUET LUMBER C0MP.\NY'S PROPERTY. 



