70 North American Forests and Forestry 



notwithstanding the comparative scarcity of the 

 material. How long the supply of the southern 

 pine will hold out, nobody can foretell at present 

 with any degree of certainty. In the first place, no 

 one knows just how much there may be standing, 

 and secondly, nobody can guess what the future 

 demand may be. It may go on increasing at the 

 tremendous rate at which it has done during the 

 last quarter-century, or it may remain comparatively 

 stationary. Probably the extreme limit, however, 

 for supplying the market with original southern 

 pine on a large scale is fifty years. 



Whether the western conifers, the sugar pines, 

 Douglas spruce, and other species, many of which 

 produce construction lumber second only to white 

 pine, will ever play an important part in lumber 

 markets east of the Rocky Mountains is doubtful. 

 They now supply the demand of the Pacific coast 

 and several foreign countries, notably Australia. 

 But it may be that the cost of transportation will 

 keep them out of the eastern markets, even after 

 the Nicaragua Canal shall have established cheap 

 communication with the Atlantic seaboard. 



As to hard-wood lumbering, the centre of that in- 

 dustry is now the great middle region, about the 

 latitude of Kentucky and Tennessee, where the 

 broad-leaved forests of the United States reach 

 their finest development. However, there is also a 

 great deal of hard-wood lumber produced in Michi- 

 gan and Wisconsin, and even such comparatively de- 

 forested States as Ohio and Indiana still contribute 



