EXOGENOUS SERIES NEEDLELEAF WOODS. 137 



SOFT-PINE. 



Soft-pine is soft, clean, light, uniform, easily worked, not 

 strong, free from knots and resins, and is yet obtainable in large 

 and perfect pieces. The wood is whitish and the yearly rings 

 are not pronounced. The supply is divided, as obtained from 

 the white pine on the one hand, and from the sugar-pine and 

 all other species on the other. 



White pine (Pinus strobus] grows in the north, central, 

 and eastern United States and was formerly the important tree 

 of North America. It emphasized the forest industries of 

 Maine and Michigan, and methods connected with harvesting 

 it have influenced logging practices in many fields. It was 

 long the only softwood seriously considered by Northern 

 lumbermen. Thirty per cent of the sawn timber and lumber 

 used in this country in 1899 was drawn from this species.* No 

 wood known to man can apply in more places than white pine. 

 There are no perfect eastern substitutes, but spruce, fir, and 

 even whitewood are thus employed. Sugar pine and redwood 

 are used on the Pacific Coast, where eastern pine has never 

 seriously competed. 



The Sugar Pine (Pinus lambertiana) of the Western States 

 is a tree growing at high elevations and is so large as to take 

 rank with the redwoods and other of the world's greatest trees. 

 The tree produces a clean, soft, coarse wood that is upon the 

 whole the best present substitute for true white pine. The 

 geographical range of the tree, is, however, such as to limit the 

 widest present usefulness of the woods. 



Among other minor American sources are White Pine (P. 

 flexilis), Rocky Mountain Region; White or Silver Pine (P. 

 monticola), Pacific Coast Region; Whitebark Pine (P. albi- 

 caulis), Pacific Coast Region; Mexican White Pine (P. strobi- 

 formis}, Arizona into Mexico; Parry's Pine (P. quadrifolia), 

 Southern California; Nut Pine (P. cembroides], Arizona into 

 Mexico. 



* Roth, U. S. Forestry Bui. No. 22, p. 73. 



" White Pine Timber Supplies." U. S. S. Doc. 55-1, Vol. IV. 



