EVERGREEN ORNAMENTAL TREES. 280 



adverting to their numerous and important uses. In the 

 United States, full four-fifths of all the houses built are con- 

 structed of the White and Yellovi^ Pine, chiefly of the former. 

 Soft, easily worked, light and fine in texture, it is almost 

 universally employed in carpentry, and for all the purposes 

 of civil architecture ; w^hile the tall stately trunks furnish 

 masts and spars, not only for our own vessels, but many of 

 those of England. A great commerce is therefore carried 

 on in the timber of this tree, and vast quantities of the 

 boards, etc., are annually exported to Europe. The Yellow 

 and Pitch Pine furnish much of the enormous supplies of 

 fuel consumed by the great number of steamboats employed 

 in navigating our numerous inland rivers. The Long- 

 leaved Pine is the great timber tree of the southern states ; 

 and when we take into account all its various products, we 

 must admit it to be the most valuable tree of the whole 

 family. The consumption of the wood of this tree in build- 

 ing, in the southern states, is immense ; and its sap furnishes 

 nearly all the turpentine, tar, pitch, and rosin, used in this 

 country, or exported to Europe. The turpentine flows from 

 large incisions made in the trunk (into boxes fastened to 

 the side of the trees for that purpose) during the whole of 

 the spring and summer. Spirit of turpentine is obtained 

 from this by distillation. Tar is procured by burning the 

 dead wood in kilns, when it flows out in a current from a 

 conduit made in the bottom. Pitch is prepared by boiling 

 tar until it is about one half diminished in bulk ; and rosin 

 is the residuum of the distillation when spirit of turpentine 

 is made. The Carolinas produce all these in the greatest 

 abundance, and so long ago as 1807, the exportation of 

 them to England alone amounted to nearly $800,000 in 



that single year. 



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