conifers. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 113 



On the Delaware peninsula the Loblolly Pine generally inhabits low lands adjacent to tide-water, 

 rarely forming continuous forests and growing in small colonies associated with Pinus echinata, and 

 with Oaks, Hickories, and other deciduous-leaved trees ; in Virginia, restricted to the tertiary coast 

 strata, it does not occur west of Richmond, but in the maritime districts it is often the prevailing tree, 1 

 springing up on lands exhausted by agriculture, where it grows very rapidly and now furnishes the 

 principal lumber supply of the region. It is exceedingly common over all the coast plain and maritime 

 region of North Carolina, where it is frequently mixed with the Long-leaved Pine, especially south of 

 Cape Fear ; and in the swamps along the streams flowing into Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds and on 

 the low ridges adjacent to them it attained its greatest size and perfection before its noblest specimens 

 fell a prey to the axe of the lumberman. In the coast region of South Carolina and Georgia, and in 

 the eastern Gulf states, the Loblolly Pine is mostly confined to the sandy borders of Pine barrens, 

 where it is scattered through forests of Magnolias, Bays, and Gum-trees, appearing, however, as it does 

 in many other districts, wherever its seeds are left undisturbed ; and in the interior it is scattered 

 over the high rolling Pine uplands to the foot of the eastern and southern slopes of the Appalachian 

 Mountains, attaining sometimes an elevation of fifteen hundred feet above the level of the sea. It is 

 less common in the Florida peninsula, where Pinus clausa and Pinus heterophylla more often cover 

 worn-out and abandoned fields. In southeastern Arkansas and the Indian Territory it is one of the 

 most important timber-trees, growing in great nearly pure forests on rolling uplands and low tertiary 

 plains ; and in western Louisiana and eastern Texas it forms considerable forests north of the region 

 occupied by the Long-leaved Pine, and is scattered through the low woods which border the marshes 

 of the coast. 2 



The wood of Pinus Tceda, which usually grows very rapidly, 3 varies much in quality in the 

 different regions which it occupies and under differing conditions of growth. That of the great trees 

 which once grew on Pamlico Sound and were valued in naval construction, and especially for the masts 

 of large vessels, is said to have been very close-grained and durable, with thin sapwood. 4 A large part 

 of the trees of original growth and the oldest and best matured second-growth trees now produce 

 coarse-grained wood, nearly one half the diameter of the trunk being sapwood, while the wood of trees 



ried on here, all the towns of the central and western parts of the 4 These trees of eastern North Carolina, which vary remarkably 



state, before the building of the Texas railroads, being constructed from all others of the species in the character of their wood and 



from timber cut in these pineries, which, however, are now ex- especially in the thinness of the sapwood, were called Rosemary 



bausted as sources of commercial prosperity. Pines, and also Great Swamp Pines, Naval Timber Pines, and 



1 L. F. Ward, Bot. Gazette, xi. 33. Slash Pines. According to Edmund Ruffin, who in 1858 published 



2 Much of this information relating to the distribution of Pinus the best account of them in volume iv., page 139, of Russell's 

 Tceda is derived from Dr. Charles Mohr's excellent monograph of Magazine, individuals from one hundred and fifty to one hundred 

 this species quoted above. and seventy feet in height, with trunk diameters of five feet, were 



3 From the study of forty-seven trees made under the direction not uncommon. He describes a spar cut from a tree of this variety 

 of the Secretary of Agriculture of the United States, it appears in Bertie, North Carolina, which was eighty feet in length and 

 that during its first ten years this tree reaches a height of from thirty-six inches square at the butt ; and sixteen sticks sent to New 

 eighteen to twenty feet, and that it attains its maximum rate of York in 1856 for shipment to Amsterdam for naval construction, 

 upward growth of rather more than twenty-four inches between under a contract with the Dutch government, which varied from 

 its fifteenth and twentieth years, while during its third decade its forty-seven to eighty-eight feet in length, squared from nineteen 

 annual growth is reduced to fifteen or sixteen inches. Trees thirty to thirty inches and were nearly all of heartwood. Mr. Ruffin 

 and fifty years old were found to have an average height of fifty also describes two trees in Washington County, North Carolina, 

 feet and of seventy feet ; those ninety years of age were about one of which was one hundred and forty-eight feet high, with a 

 ninety-five feet high, later trowing slowly with shoots only three trunk diameter of thirty-five and one quarter inches, and two hun- 

 or four inches long. One tree had attained a height of seventy- dred and eighty-three years old, with two hundred and seven years 

 seven feet in thirty-six years, and another a height of seventy-six of heartwood ; while the other was one hundred and seventy feet 

 feet in forty-four years ; and two trees one hundred years old high, sixty inches in diameter, and two hundred and eighty years 

 were each one hundred and eighteen feet tall. The diameter old, with one hundred and seventy years of heartwood. A mast 

 accretion was found to decrease with age, while the area accretion of the United States man-of-war Roanoke, cut in Bertie, had three 

 remained nearly the same. The average trunk diameter at forty hundred and two layers of annual growth, one hundred and eighty- 

 years of age was about ten inches, and at eighty years seventeen six being of heartwood, and was forty-one inches in diameter, 

 inches. (Mlodziansky, Garden and Forest, ix. 93.) 



