WHITE PINE. 49 



and ice-cream freezers. In making fish barrels the sapling pine is 

 used. This is a hard, tough, resinous, coarse-grained white pine, 

 which has greater strength than the ordinary kind. Its character 

 is supposed to be due to its place of growth on dry, elevated lands. 

 White pine grows in various soils and situations, but the better the 

 land the better the wood. The sapling pine is in a measure similar 

 to the white poplar a tough, inferior kind of yellow poplar which 

 has grown on dry, poor land. 



The cooper chooses white pine for a rather large class of domestic 

 wares which are intended to contain articles of food. Among these 

 are salt buckets, and small kegs or keelers to contain spice, cloves, 

 tea, coffee, and similar commodities belonging to the pantry and 

 kitchen. 



A larger kind of cooperage calls for the same wood, and it is manu- 

 factured into silos and tanks. Some of the highest grade white 

 pine is purchased by tank builders. 



The wood is well fitted for barrel and keg heads and barrel bungs, 

 and it serves as bottoms for bent-wood measures, and particularly 

 as bottoms for axle-grease boxes. 



FARM USES. 



White pine has had and still has many uses about the farm in addi- 

 tion to those already enumerated. Vast quantities of it were built 

 into fences while it was cheap and convenient. It was occasionally 

 split for rails, though probably not often. It was not an ideal 

 fence-post wood, because it did not last long, yet it was extensively 

 employed for that purpose. Its chief importance in fence building 

 was as sawed boards to be nailed to posts and as pickets for inclosing 

 gardens and truck patches. Such a fence, under favorable condi- 

 tions, would do service 15 or 20 years with slight repairs. Picket 

 fences were formerly seen much oftener than at present, and the 

 increased cost of white pine and yellow poplar, two excellent woods 

 for that purpose, has doubtless had something to do with the partial 

 disappearance of pickets around yards and gardens. 



Parts of many farm machines are of white pine. For hoppers, 

 sieve frames, parts of screens, boxes, drawers, seed holders, tool 

 carriers, and many other portions of fanning mills, reapers, drills, 

 tedders, thrashing machines, corn shellers, separators, and scores of 

 other apparatus and appliances that are necessary to a modern farm 

 it holds an important place. Its use for dairy machinery and appli- 

 ances does not appear to be decreasing. 



Many bee men prefer it to most othej* woods for hives and frames, 1 

 and poultry men consider that its lightness fits it above many others 

 as material for egg carriers, brooders, incubators, and other poultry- 

 yard appliances. 



101500 Bull. 9911 1 



