EVERGREEN TREES AND SHRUBS. 521 



australis. — This is the great timber tree of the southern forests and 

 pine barrens in the Carolinas and the Gulf States, and is not hardy- 

 north of Richmond. It grows to sixty or seventy feet in height, with 

 a slender trunk. The leaves are from eight inches to a foot or 

 more in length, in three's, of a beautiful brilliant green, and collected 

 in bunches at the extremities of the branches. This pine is put to 

 more varied uses than any other. Its timber is close and heavy, 

 and valuable both for house and ship-building. Its sap is the raw 

 turpentine of commerce (from which the spirits of turpentine is 

 distilled), and is gathered in the same manner as that from the sugar 

 maple. Tar is made from the dead wood, which has the curious 

 property, as the wood decays, of absorbing from it year after year 

 all the resinous matter ; so that the heart-wood, already filled with 

 resinous juice, becomes surcharged to such a degree as to double 

 its weight in a year, and continues to draw from the sap-wood till 

 the latter rots off. Pine-knots, which are so largely used for torches 

 and fires at the south are the butts of small branches from which 

 the sap-wood has rotted off, leaving them full of rosin. 



P. australis excelsa is a variety from the northwest coast oi 

 America, which has proved hardy in north Germany, and ought to 

 be tried in our northern States. 



The Loblolly Pine. P. tceda. — This tree is peculiar to the 

 sand-barrens of the southern States, and is the first tree to occupy 

 grounds exhausted by cultivation. It rises to the height of eighty 

 feet with a clear stem of forty or fifty feet without a branch, and 

 above, a wide-spreading head. Not hardy, and of no value north 

 of Virginia. 



The Jersey Scrub Pine. P. imps. — A low tree of rough and 

 straggling growth, a native of New Jersey. Not desirable as an 

 ornamental tree. 



Banks', or Gray Pine. P. banksiana. — A dwarf variety from 

 the north of Canada, which does not seem to refine with cultivation, 

 and is described by Sargent as "a stunted scrubby straggling 

 bush." Loudon, however, considered it quite interesting on 

 account of its curious manner of growth, and another writer 

 (Richardson) describes it as a " handsome tree, with long spread- 



