THE MARITIME PINE. 597 
interior as well as on the dunes of the seacoast, and with equal 
advantage. This tree resembles the pitch pine of the Southern 
Ainerican States in its habits, and is applied to the same uses. 
The extraction of turpentine from it begins at the age of about 
twenty years, or when it has attained a diameter of from nine 
to twelve inches. Incisions are made up and down the trunk, 
to the depth of about half an inch in the wood, and it is insist- 
ed that if not more than two such slits are cut, the tree is not 
sensibly injured by the process. The growth, indeed, is some- 
what checked, but the wood becomes superior to that of trees 
from which the turpentine is not extracted. Thus treated, the 
pine continues to flourish to the age of one hundred or one 
hundred and twenty years, and up to this age the trees on an 
acre yield annually 300 pounds of essence of turpentine, and 250 
pounds of resin, worth together not far from ten dollars. The 
expense of extraction and distillation is calculated at about four 
dollars, and a clear profit of more than five dollars per acre is 
left.* This is exclusive of the value of the timber, when finally 
cut, which, of course, amounts to a very considerable sum. 
In Denmark, where the climate is much colder, hardier 
conifers, as well as the birch and other northern trees, are 
found to answer a better purpose than the maritime pine, and 
it is doubtful whether this tree would be able to resist the win- 
ter on the dunes of Massachusetts. Probably the pitch-pine of 
* These processes are substantially similar to those employed in the pineries 
of the Carolinas, but they are better systematized and more economically 
conducted in France. In the latter country, all the products of the pine, even 
to the cones, find a remunerating market, while, in America, the price of resin 
is so low, that in the fierce steamboat races on the great rivers, large quantities 
of it are thrown into the furnaces to increase the intensity of the fires. Ina 
carefully prepared article on the Southern pineries published in an American 
magazine—I think Harper’s—a few years ago, it was stated that the resin 
from the turpentine distilleries was sometimes allowed to run to waste; and 
the writer, in one instance, observed a mass, thus rejected as rubbish, which 
was estimated to amount to two thousand barrels. Olmsted saw, near a dis- 
tillery which had been in operation but a single year, a pool of resin estimated 
to contain three thousand barrels, which had been allowed to run off as waste. 
—A Journey in the seaboard Slave States, 1853, p. 345. 
