154 



SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



CONIFERS. 



building of bridges, viaducts, and trestle-work, in the construction of railway cars, for which it is 

 preferred in the United States to any other wood, for railway ties, 1 fencing, flooring, and the interior 

 finish of buildings, and for fuel 2 and charcoal. 



Rich in resinous secretions, Pinus palustris supplies the world with a large part of its naval 

 stores. 3 



diameter inside the bark, and two hundred and twenty years old. 

 The sapwood of this specimen is an inch in thickness, with forty 

 layers of annual growth, and the bark is only an eighth of an inch 

 thick. 



1 Railway ties of hard pine are every year in greater demand ; 

 they are used almost exclusively in the south, and are now laid 

 on many of the principal lines in the northern states, which a few 

 years ago depended on local supplies of white oak and chestnut. 

 This makes constant and increasing drafts upon the forests of 

 Long-leaved Pine, enormous quantities of young trees being cut 

 every year for ties. The trees used are generally fifteen or sixteen 

 inches in diameter at three feet above the ground, and, as rule, 

 only the butt cuts are used, usually not more than ten ties being 

 obtained from an acre. The best trees are therefore sacrificed 

 long before they reach the period of greatest value. 



2 Of late years a profitable industry has been developed in the 

 south by cutting the resinous stumps of trees in abandoned turpen- 

 tine orchards into long narrow strips about three quarters of an 

 inch thick, steaming them, and rolling them into small bundles, 

 which are shipped to the north, and sold for kindling wood. Pine 

 wood, called light wood, abnormally filled with resin, the result of 

 working the tree for turpentine, is very durable in contact with the 

 soil, and is often used in the southern states for fence-posts. 



8 The production of turpentine in the pineries adjacent to the 

 coast of North Carolina had become an industry of considerable 

 importance before the Revolution, most of the crude turpentine 

 being sent to England. After the war it was distilled in clumsy 

 iron retorts in North Carolina and in some of the northern cities, 

 and as early as 1818 the demand had greatly increased the supply, 

 although the field of operation was not extended south of Cape 

 Fear River nor more than a hundred miles from the coast until 

 1836 ; but the introduction of the copper still in 1834 and the de- 

 mand for spirits of turpentine in the manufacture of india rubber 

 goods and for illuminating purposes, rapidly developed this indus- 

 try, which gradually spread farther inland and began to move 

 southward, although Wilmington, North Carolina, remained the 

 chief centre for the distribution of naval stores until a few years 

 ago, when ports nearer to the productive forests superseded it. 

 The manufacture of naval stores under the influence of ruinous 

 competition has often exceeded the demand, and as thus only the 

 most wasteful methods, having in view large and immediate re- 

 turns without regard for future supplies, have been profitable, wide- 

 spread ruin has been caused in the southern pineries. Searching 

 always for virgin forests, the industry has gradually spread until it 

 has now invaded every state where Pinus palustris grows. Although 

 it is not probable that the drawing off of the resinous juices of the 

 trees has an injurious effect upon the heartwood, the formation of 

 the resin taking place only in the sapwood, the timber of boxed 

 trees is almost invariably ruined, as if left standing they are at- 

 tacked by fire, which so weakens them that they are soon blown 

 over, or are destroyed by the boring of Capricorn beetles or by the 

 spread of fungal diseases over the wounds on the trunk. 



The trees selected for boxing are usually from twelve to eighteen 

 inches in diameter, although trunks only eight inches through are 

 now sometimes worked. A deep notch or box is made in the trunk 



of the tree by a cut generally made at twelve inches above the 

 ground, slanting downward about seven inches in depth, and joined 

 by a second cut started ten inches above the first, and extending 

 down from the bark to meet it. In this way a segment is removed 

 from the trunk, and a triangular trough formed four inches deep 

 and four inches wide at the top, with -*, capacity of about three 

 pints. Two such boxes, or upon a large trunk sometimes four, 

 are made on each tree. A crop, the unit of production, consists of 

 ten thousand boxes. They are cut early in November with a nar- 

 row-bladed axe specially manufactured for the purpose, and the 

 trees are worked on an average during thirty-two weeks. As soon 

 as the upper surface of the box ceases to exude freely, it is hacked 

 over and a fresh surface exposed, the dried resin adhering to the 

 wound having been first carefully removed with a sharp narrow 

 steel scraper, the hacking being done with a strong dull knife fas- 

 tened to the end of a short handle which is furnished at the lower 

 end with an iron ball weighing about four pounds to give increased 

 force to the strokes and thus lighten the labor. The boxes, espe- 

 cially after the first season, are frequently hacked as often as once 

 a week, and are thus gradually extended upward until upon trees 

 which have been worked during a number of seasons the upper end 

 of the box may be ten or twelve feet above the ground. Once 

 every few weeks the resin caught in the bottom of the box is re- 

 moved into a bucket with a small sharp oval steel spade attached 

 to a short wooden handle. The product of these dippings, as this 

 operation is called, is placed in barrels and transported to the dis- 

 tillery. During the first season the boxes are usually dipped eight 

 times, yielding an average of three hundred barrels of turpentine 

 to the crop of ten thousand boxes. The second year the number 

 of dippings is usually reduced to five, the product falling off to one 

 hundred and fifty barrels, while for the third season one hundred 

 barrels are considered a fair yield from three dippings. To this 

 must be added the yield of the scrapings, which for the first year 

 is estimated at from sixty to seventy barrels of two hundred pounds 

 each from a crop, and for the succeeding years at one hundred bar- 

 rels. The resinous flow is most abundant during July and August, 

 diminishing as the nights become cooler, and ceasing in October or 

 November. Trees are profitably worked in North Carolina during 

 four or five years, and in that state, where the industry has been 

 longest practiced, trees are sometimes worked for more than ten 

 years, and then after a rest of several years are worked again with 

 new boxes cut between the old ones. Farther south the trees seem 

 to possess less recuperative power, and in South Carolina orchards 

 are rarely profitably worked for more than four seasons, while in 

 Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi they are frequently 

 abandoned at the end of the second and almost invariably at the 

 end of the third year. The copper stills generally used in this 

 country have a capacity of eight hundred gallons, or a charge of 

 from twenty to twenty-five barrels of crude turpentine, and in 

 order that a still may run night and day trees on about four thou- 

 sand acres of average Pine land are worked. 



The following grades of turpentine are recognized : " Virgin 

 Dip," or " Soft White Gum Turpentine," the product of the first 

 year ; " Yellow Dip," the product of the second and succeeding 

 years, growing darker colored and less liquid every year ; and 



