86 



TIMBER PINES OK THE SOUTHERN UNITED STATES. 



The trees of the extensive groves of Cuban Pine in the vicinity of Mobile upon the loamy 

 lands of the coast plain, which have sprung up since 1804, when these lands were completely 

 stripped of all arboreal growth, average at present between 50 and (SO feet in height by a diameter 

 of from 14 to Hi inches breast high. Trees of second growth, forming open groves on lands of 

 similar character, and also more or less deficient in drainage, forty-five to sixty-five years old, 

 measure from 65 to 85 feet in height and from 15 to 20 inches in diameter breast high. 



At the edge of a heavily wooded swamp, in a perpetually wet, sandy, and mucky soil and 

 skirted by large Longleaf Pines occupying the steep slope rising from the bottom, a tree measur- 

 ing 114 feet in height, with a diameter of 24 inches breast high, the trunk clear of limbs for a 

 length of fully GO feet, showed one hundred and tbirty-five rings of annual growth. Another 

 tree felled deeper in the same swamp, of lank growth, with a poorly developed crown, rising to 

 a height of 88 feet and towering above the dense growth of black gums, swamp maples, and white 

 bays, was found to measure only 15 inches in diameter, with almost the same number of annual 

 rings. Trees of second growth which have sprung up in clearings with a drier surface soil under- 

 laid by a clayey substratum, with free exposure to sunlight and air, reach in little over half the 

 time the full size of those produced in the forest-covered swamps. 



TABLE I. Growth of Cuban Pine during first xtaytn of life, from four to twenty years. 



