EIvISHA MITCHElvI^ SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY. 13 



after that, at least in a forest, its growth is wonderful. 

 Frequently in a thick wood where young- trees have 

 been allowed to grow, they will in eight or nine years 

 after height growth has begun, have reached a height 

 of 18 or 20 feet and a diameter of no more than three or 

 four inches, and will have g'rown each year from only 

 one bud, the terminal one, at the end of the woody axis, 

 there being no branches and no sign of any having been 

 formed. For leaves there will be only a single broom 

 like bunch terminating the slender stem. The rapidi- 

 ty with which this stem is raised and the fewness of its 

 branches until the natural height of the tree is reached 

 makes one of the fiine qualities of the timber. It gives 

 long stocks which have no knots in them, even small 

 ones, to produce any uniformity of quality or to make 

 weak places on the interior of an apparently perfect 

 piece of timber. This feature which i^ the cause of so 

 fine a quality of wood is a great drawback to the de- 

 velopment of the young trees. This single terminal 

 bud is a very large and complicated structure, and 

 when once destroyed in any way no other bud is usually 

 ly formed by which the growth of the young seedling 

 can be continued. It is true of most conifers (/. e. 

 pines, firs, cypress and cedars) that they do not form 

 buds readily and that they rarely sprout from the stump 

 and are very difficult to reproduce from cuttings, etc., 

 but with the long leaf such buds are formed and sprouts 

 developed even more rarely than with most other coni- 

 fers. 



ENEMIES OF THE LONG LEAF PINE. 



The long leaf pine has a severer struggle for exis- 

 tence than any other of our forest trees, for the reason 



