TIMBER OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 77 



pine up to 100 years of age, and the timber is rather 

 heavier and stronger, the heartwood is reddish brown, 

 sapwood yellowish white, and there is often a good deal of 

 it. It is extensively used for beams, flooring, ceilings, and 

 building work generally, also for railway sleepers, and the 

 smaller trees for pit props. Sugar and yellow pine form 

 nearly half of the timber output of California at the 

 present time, redwood nearly the other half. Western 

 yellow pine is very resinous, but less so and lighter than 

 the southern yellow pines. The resinous smell of the wood 

 is very remarkable (Fig. 16). 



Weight about 32 Ibs. per cubic foot. 



Douglas Fir or Oregon Pine (Pseudo-twga Douglasii), Fig. 

 17, also known as Douglas spruce, yellow or white fir, and 

 red fir, is really neither a pine nor a fir ; it is generally 

 known to the trade as Oregon, and it is sometimes said 

 that Douglas fir is the better timber. They are really the 

 same, although, as is often the case, the timber from one 

 locality is better than that from another. 1 It is the chief 

 tree of Washington and Oregon, and the most abundant 

 and most valuable in British Columbia, where it attains its 

 greatest size ; in Vancouver Island, or along the shores 

 and along the river valleys near the coast on the mainland, 

 trees of 300 ft. in height are not rare. This timber is 

 shipped from San Francisco and other Pacific ports ; it 

 ranks third in order of timber-producing trees of the United 

 States, 2 has nearly trebled its output from 1899 to 1905, and 

 the output will doubtless soon exceed that of the pine of 

 the southern States. 



1 There are two kinds of Douglas fir recognised, one called "red 

 fir," although it is not really a fir, and which is the timber usually 

 imported into Great Britain, and the other called " white fir," and is 

 strictly a fir, but is not such a good timber for general purposes. 



2 In 1906 statistics it ranks second, and white pine third. 



