AMERICAN LUMBER 357 



the United States. While Europe has only one or two or at 

 best three species of pines, all of the yellow or hard pine 

 tribe, we can offer at least ten useful in the arts, both soft and 

 hard pines, out of the thirty six native species. Among the 

 soft wood pines, the king of the pines, the apple among the 

 woods, acceptable in almost any form, the white pine, is ours, 

 and its congener on the Pacific coast, the sugar pine, with its 

 cones a foot and more long, and its trunks towering 250 to 

 300 feet skyward, with diameters of ten to twelve feet. We 

 boast of the long leaf pine, or Georgia pine, in the south, 

 which excels among the hard pines, useful for heavy construc- 

 tion, every other pine known to the world. Again, instead 

 of one species of spruce found in Europe, we count at least 

 four of our five species as timber trees; instead of one fir, we 

 have five or six fit for lumber out of the ten or twelve species, 

 and two instead of one larch. In addition we have, with the 

 bald cypress, two kinds of hemlock, four cedars, and a juniper, 

 two arbor vitse, with the redwoods and Douglas spruce, species 

 of which no representatives of useful size or quantity may be 

 found in Europe. If we were to canvass the deciduous leafed 

 trees, oaks, hickories, birches, walnut, maples, ashes, elms, 

 basswood, magnolias, tulip tree, sweet gum, sycamore, and 

 poplars, we would find the same difference in our favor. Alto- 

 gether, while it would be stretching the characteristic of a 

 useful tree considerably if we recognized around twenty five 

 species as such in Europe, we would be within very reasonable 

 limits if we claimed to have in the 450 species indigenous to 

 the United States at least 125 that are useful in the arts and 

 of abundant occurrence, although only forty or fifty appear 

 now quoted in trade papers. Such wealth of material, occur- 

 ring over large areas, has naturally led to a lavish use of wood 

 and to the development of a lumber industry which is in its 

 extent and its methods unique in the world. 



We use every year eight times as much wood and more 

 than three times as much lumber as the frugal Germans and 

 at least four times as much lumber as our cousins in Great 

 Britain, who have to import almost every stick they use and 

 have learned to substitute stone and iron where possible. 

 How foolish must those good people appear, who in the fear 



