conifers. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 145 



slopes of Kittatinny or Blue Mountain, but from the Raritan to the shores of Delaware Bay large 

 forests of this Pine, frequently mixed with Pinus rtgida, alternate with those of Oaks, Chestnuts, and 

 other deciduous-leaved trees, often growing freely on sterile sands and clays. It is common, also, on 

 the Delaware and Maryland peninsula; farther south it is rare in the coast region, being generally 

 replaced by the Long-leaved Pine, and is confined chiefly to the middle and upper districts, where it 

 is mixed with other Pines and with the prevailing Oaks and Hickories of the Appalachian forest, 

 ascending in western North Carolina to an elevation of two thousand five hundred feet above the level 

 of the sea. In Alabama and Mississippi the Short-leaved Pine rarely occurs in the lower part of the 

 Pine belt of the coast; but common on the rolling hills of the central and upper regions, it here 

 becomes a prominent feature of the forest. In western Louisiana it abounds on the uplands north of 

 Red River, and sometimes forms pure forests or is mixed with Oaks, Hickories, and other deciduous- 

 leaved trees, and with the Loblolly Pine ; and in eastern Texas from the prairies adjacent to the valley 

 of the Red River and above the belt of Long-leaved Pine it spreads over hundreds of square miles of 

 low undulating hills. It inhabits dry high ridges in the Indian Territory, and in Arkansas on both 

 sides of the Arkansas River it is frequent in the forests of deciduous-leaved trees on broken hills, and 

 often forms great forests on wide table-lands. In Missouri, where it is generally scattered over the 

 southern part of the state, it is most abundant on the low hills and table-lands of the southern slope of 

 the Ozark Mountains, where its tall stems rise high above its associates, and crossing the Mississippi it 

 maintains a foothold on river bluffs in Union and Jackson Counties, Illinois, and is distributed with 

 widely scattered colonies through Kentucky and Tennessee. 1 



One of the most generally distributed and valuable timber-trees of eastern America, Pinus 

 echinata now supplies a considerable part of the hard pine lumber cut in the trans-Mississippi pineries 

 used in the states of the central west. The wood, which varies greatly in quality and in the thickness 

 of the sapwood, is heavy, hard, strong, and usually coarse-grained ; it is orange-color or yellow-brown, 

 with nearly white sapwood, 2 and contains broad bands of small summer cells occupying nearly half the 

 width of the annual growth, numerous large resin passages, and many conspicuous medullary rays. 

 The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.6104, a cubic foot weighing 38.04 pounds. 3 

 Among yellow pines it is only surpassed in quality by that of Pinus palustris, and being less resinous, 

 softer, and more easily worked, it is often preferred to it for cabinet-making, for the interior finish of 



1 See Mohr, Bull. No. 13, Div. Forestry U. S. Dept. Agric. 88 from one half to five eighths of its height. At the age of fifty 

 {The Timber Pines of the Southern U. £.). years the height of the trees varies from forty to sixty feet, and 



2 The sapwood varies greatly in thickness in trees of the same the trunk diameter from ten to fourteen inches. Between sixty 

 diameter, the variation being apparently dependent on situation, and seventy years of age the trees are from fifty to seventy feet 

 soil, exposure, and moisture. Trees on high ridges and in dry high, with a trunk diameter of from twelve to fifteen inches, and 

 sterile soil have usually the thinnest sapwood, although on ridges in their one hundredth year average from ninety to ninety-five feet 

 it varies from two to six inches in thickness in trees growing side in height, with a trunk diameter of from sixteen to nineteen inches, 

 by side ; and on lower land from three to twelve inches. In Between the ages of one hundred and twenty and one hundred and 

 Arkansas lumbermen recognize two varieties of the wood, yellow thirty years trees from ninety to one hundred and ten feet occur, 

 and bull, distinguishing them while the trees are still standing by with trunks from eighteen to twenty-four inches in diameter. The 

 cutting into them with axes ; the bull pine, which is from low oldest tree examined by Mohr had two hundred and eight layers 

 ground, grows more rapidly and is heavier with thicker sapwood, of annual growth, and was one hundred and nine feet in height, 

 while the yellow pine, from sandy uplands, is lighter, straighter- with a, trunk twenty-four inches in diameter. The largest tree 

 grained, and more easily worked, and is used as a substitute for felled by him was one hundred and seventeen feet high, with a 

 white pine in sashes, doors, blinds, and the interior finish of houses. trunk diameter of twenty-five inches and one hundred and forty- 



8 It has been observed by Mohr (I. c. 98) that in Alabama the three layers of annual growth, 

 plants of this species attain a height varying from three to five feet The log specimen, cut in Arkansas, in the Jesup Collection of 

 at the end of their fifth year, the stem being from five eighths to North American Woods in the American Museum of Natural His- 

 seven eighths of an inch in thickness, and that in ten years they are tory, New York, is twenty-three and a half inches in diameter 

 from ten to sixteen feet high, with stems from two to two and a inside the bark, and two hundred and seven years of age. In this 

 half inches in diameter. At the age of from fifteen to twenty specimen the sapwood is two inches and a half thick and seventy- 

 years the trees are from twenty to thirty feet in height, with a stem four years old. 

 diameter of four or five inches, the crown of the tree occupying 



