64 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



is less than 55° F., and the growing season not more than half 

 the length of the year : climates pretty well suited for apples but 

 not for cotton. 1 



This species is rather sensitive to fire, at least when young, 

 and perhaps up to middle age. In northern lower Michigan, and 

 doubtless elsewhere, there are large areas said to have been 

 covered with white pine forests up to about thirty years ago, 

 when the lumberman came along and felled them. Since then 

 fires, mainly of human origin, have been too frequent to allow 

 the pine to reproduce itself except in protected places like 

 islands and shores of lakes and streams, and the uplands 

 are covered with a worthless scrub of birch, aspen, bird 

 cherry and other fireweed trees, averaging about 10 feet in 

 height. 



The white pine is one of the world's most important timber 

 trees. It was originally so abundant, and its wood is so easily 

 worked, that it has been used for almost every purpose that does 

 not require great strength, hardness or durability. Millions of 

 houses have been built of it, and probably hundreds of millions 

 of dry-goods boxes. On account of its growing within easy 

 reach of some of the oldest and most thickly settled parts of this 

 country, the value of its lumber which has been placed on the 

 market in the last 300 years doubtless exceeds that of any other 

 North American tree." At the present time the leading states in 

 the production of white pine lumber are Minnesota, Wisconsin, 

 Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York 

 and North Carolina, in the order named. But if the figures for 

 the last census had been computed on a basis of equal areas, 

 Massachusetts would rank first. New Hampshire second, and 

 Minnesota third. 



The Red or "Norway" Pine {Finns resinosa) has a range 

 approximately concentric with that of the white pine, but smaller. 

 It is confined to the glaciated region, except that it has been 

 reported from two or three countries in central Pennsylvania and 

 one in West Virginia. In some places in the neighbourhood of 

 the upper Great Lakes it forms pure stands with little under- 



^ The range of the white pine perhaps does not overlap that of the cotton 

 crop at all, though they can be seen within a mile of each other at the western 

 base of the Blue Ridge in northern Georgia. 



- For valuable notes on the economic history of this and other pines see 

 Bulletin 99 of the U.S. Forest Service, by Hall and Maxwell, 191 1. 



