1028 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



on rather dry land, measured after they were felled over 223 ft., and speaks of a 

 mast cut on the Penobscot river in 1841, which, after being hewn to an octagonal 

 shape, measured 90 ft. long, 36 in. in diameter at the butt, and 28 in. at the top. 



The tree lives to a very great age, remaining sound up to 350 or 400 years, and 

 it is said in New England that no one has lived long enough to see the stump of a 

 white pine decay. Fences made from the stumps after they have been torn up by 

 the roots, show after 100 years few signs of decay. 



The white pine grows naturally on all kinds of soil, and varies very much in its 

 habit according to the soil and surroundings, but flourishes best in a deep, moist 

 sandy loam, and in land which, being covered with a thick growth of moss, never 

 dries in summer. 



The trees now commonly seen by the traveller in New England, which have 

 been left when the original forest was felled, or which have sprung up from seed 

 on abandoned farms, or as second growth in forest which has been logged, give no 

 idea of what the tree is in a virgin forest. These are now only found in remote 

 localities from which the logs cannot be profitably extracted ; and the ingenuity of the 

 lumberman is so great, and the present value of large clean logs so high, that it is not 

 easy to find any which have not been cleared of their finest timber. 



The reproductive power of the tree is very good, whenever fire is kept out of 

 the forest, and large areas of land which have been abandoned by the descendants of 

 the original settlers as unprofitable to cultivate, are now becoming 1 re-covered with 

 white pine, from which second growth in New Hampshire and Vermont alone, Sargent 

 tells us that no less than 100,000,000 ft. of lumber were manufactured in the year 1880. 



A remarkable instance of the rapid growth and branching habit of the white 

 pine on land which has been burnt over is described by Mary Robbins in Garden and 

 Forest, viii. p. 333. These trees are in a large cemetery at St. Stephen, New 

 Brunswick, on land which was devastated by fire in 1 8 2 1 . The largest of them in 1895 

 were 75 ft. high and 1 1 ft. or more in girth, with high horizontal or perpendicular 

 branches coming off close to the ground, some of which are as much as 7 ft. in 

 circumference and spread 40 to 60 ft. from the trunk. 



History and Cultivation 



The white pine was first described by Plukenet* in 1696, and according to 

 Aiton 8 was first cultivated 4 at Badminton in Gloucestershire by the Duchess of 

 Beaufort in 1705. Its common English name was given it because Lord Wey- 

 mouth planted it 6 largely in the beginning of the 1 8th century at Longleat, Wilts ; 



1 In U.S. Forest Service, Circular 67 (1907), a leaflet on the planting of this species, it is said that in many situations, 

 if the land is protected from fire, white pine will extend itself rapidly by natural seeding ; and planting is recommended only 

 when natural regeneration is impracticable. 



s Plukenet, Amalth. Bot. 171 (1705). 3 Hart. Kew. iii. 369 (1789). 



4 It was introduced earlier into France, as a plant was growing in the Royal Nurseries at Fontainebleau in 1553. Cf. 

 Belon, De Arboribus Coniferis, published in that year, and quoted by Bolle, in Gartenflora, 1890, p. 434. 



6 The date of first planting at Longleat is uncertain, and possibly preceded that at Badminton. In London Catalogue of 

 Trees by Society of Gardeners, 57 (1730), it is said that " Lord Weymouth's pine was raised from seed in Badminton Gardens 

 several years since, and has been growing many years in the gardens of Lord Weymouth, where it hath produced ripe seed for 

 several years." 



