CONIFERS. 



SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



117 



The wood of Pinus rigida is light, soft, not strong, brittle, coarse-grained, and very durable ; it is 

 light brown or red, with thick yellow or often nearly white sapwood, and contains broad bands of small 

 summer cells, many conspicuous resin passages, and numerous obscure medullary rays. The specific 

 gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.5151, a cubic foot weighing 32.10 pounds. It is largely used 

 for fuel and in the manufacture of charcoal, and is occasionally sawed into lumber ; in the middle states 

 it was employed in early times for the sills and beams of buildings. 



The wood contains large quantities of resin, and before the products of the richer pineries of the 

 south reached northern markets it furnished considerable quantities of turpentine and of tar, which 

 in New England and the middle states was of some commercial importance up to the time of the 

 Revolution. 1 



The earliest account of Pinus rigida was published in 1743, 2 and it was cultivated in England a 

 few years later. 3 The ease and cheapness with which it can be raised from seeds, and its rapid growth 

 in the northern states on soil too sterile to produce crops of other wood, give special silvicultural value 

 to the Pitch Pine, and large areas of barren sands on Cape Cod and on the island of Nantucket, 

 Massachusetts, have been successfully covered with forests of this tree. 4 In recent years it has been 

 tried in forest-planting in Germany, where, however, it gives little promise of surpassing the indigenous 

 species in any useful quality. 5 



1 " The Firre and Pine trees that grow in many places, shooting 

 up exceeding high, especially the Pine : they doe afford good 

 masts, good board, Rozin and Turpentine. Out of these Pines is 

 gotten the candle-wood that is so much spoken of, which may serve 

 for a shift amongst poore folkes ; but I cannot commend it for sin- 

 gular good, because it is something sluttish, dropping » pitchie 

 kinde of substance where it stands." (Wood, New England's Pros- 

 pect, pt. i. chap. ii. 15.) 



The Pines alluded to here are probably both Pinus Strobus and 

 Pinus rigida, the former supplying the masts and boards, and the 

 latter resin, turpentine, and kindling-wood. 



At the first meeting of a company, held in Plymouth, Massachu- 

 setts, on the 10th of March, 1679, which had recently acquired 

 lands on Buzzard's Bay, where Pinus rigida is still common, it was 

 agreed that those who " first settell and are Livers shall be allowed 

 to make ten Barrells of tarr a peice for a year." (See Bliss, Colo- 

 nial Times on Buzzard's Bay, 5.) 



" The Trade in Glocester-County consists chiefly in Pitch, Tar, 

 and Rosin • the later of which is made by Robert Styles, an excel- 

 lent Artist in that sort of Work, for he delivers it as clear as any 

 Gum Arabick." (Gabriel Thomas, An Historical and Geographical 

 account of the Province and County of Pennsylvania and of West- 

 New-Jersey in America [The History of West-New-Jersey, 32].) 



2 Pinus foliis longissimis ex una theca ternis, Colden, Act. Hort. 

 Ups. 1743, 230 (PL Novebor.). 



Pinus Canadensis trifolia conis aculeatis, Duhamel, Traite des 

 Arbres, ii. 126 (excl. syn. Fl. Virgin.). 



Pinus Americana foliis prailongis subinde ternis, conis plurimis con- 

 fertim nascentibus, Duhamel, Traite des Arbres, ii. 126. 



8 Loudon, Arb. Brit. iv. 2239, f. 2123-2126. 



4 Bowditch, Rep. Sec. Connecticut State Board Agric. 1877-78, 

 235. — Garden and Forest, iv. 442. 



The trees in these plantations, raised from seeds sown in shallow 

 furrows on barren land covered only with grasses and sedges and 

 fully exposed to ocean gales, and in the aggregate covering several 

 thousand acres, represent one of the most interesting and success- 

 ful silvicultural experiments made in the United States, although 

 the trees have suffered from the attacks of the larvae of Retinia 

 frustrana, a small lepidopterous insect which has nearly extermi- 

 nated those planted many years ago on Nantucket (Scudder, The 

 Pine Moth of Nantucket). 



6 R. Hartig, Forst.-Nat. Zeit. i. 430. 



In recent years great quantities of the seeds of Pinus rigida have 

 been imported into Europe for forest-planting in the belief that it 

 was this tree which produced the pitch pine largely exported from 

 the United States and the wood of Pinus palustris. 



