FOREST COMMISSIONER'S REPORT, 43 



These facts of arrangement are the key to the character of the 

 lumber. Pine on open land where its sunlight is unobstructed takes 

 a quick start and grows very rapidly, distancing its neighbors. If 

 not crowded by other trees of its own species, a long, spreading 

 stout-limbed crown is formed which enables the trunk to put on 

 diameter quickly. Sometimes such trees will add an inch to their 

 diameter in a year. Lumber so grown however is weak, and is 

 further weakened and rendered useless for the better purpose to 

 which pine is devoted, by the large and numerous knots. Too 

 rough and knotty to ever furnish a higher grade of lumber, the 

 question of when to cut this -'latter pine" is the question where to 

 get the most bulk and value from the land. 



Two areas of pine were seen, however, — and these were, doubt- 

 less, typical of others, — of a character to command more respect- 

 ful treatments A small area above the village of Katahdin Iron 

 Works and considerable ones between the two branches of the 

 Penobscot came up quite thickly to pine. Naturally the trees did 

 not reach merchantable proportions f-o soon as on tracts where each 

 individual had more room, but the promise which those trees did 

 give and do still give of producing lumber of a high grade puts 

 them and the land on which they stand in an entirely different 

 <iategory. This matter is thought worthy of a little close con- 

 sideration. 



For the life of a tree the crown is the important portion of its 

 anatomy, since, in the chemical action of the leaves is the center of 

 its life processes. The trunk is in large part dead. For the pur- 

 poses of man, however, the trunk is the main thing to be considered. 

 That should be straight and smooth, long-bodied and clear of limbs. 

 For the production of these qualities of good timber it is essential, 

 therefore, that the lower limbs of a tree, those that nourish it in 

 the early portion of its life, should not grow to any considerable 

 size. If the live limbs of a tree as it grows in height are confined to 

 the upper half of its length, the dead ones below in time drop off 

 and the succeeding rings of growth as they are deposited round the 

 trunk are uninterrupted and clear. 



This process is essentially a limitation of the life of a tree, a 

 specialization for the production of a trunk of certain character. 

 These characters in the ordinary course of nature are produced by 

 competition. If a tree is closely surrounded by neighbors of equal 

 vigor, its lower leaves become shaded, their life processes grow 



