WHITE PINE. 53 



White-pine piano keys compete for first place with basswood. It 

 has other uses in piano and organ making, and for some purposes is 

 substituted for holly. It is an excellent wood for pipes in church 

 organs, and for that purpose has been classed with the sugar pine of 

 California and the southern white cedar of the Atlantic coast. 



Golf-goods makers find it useful, though for very different pur- 

 poses from those demanding hickory, ash, and elm. It goes into 

 racket handles, where a light-weight wood is desired, and is fre- 

 quently a competitor with red cedar for that purpose. 



Caskets and coffins and the boxes in which they are shipped are 

 manufactured of white pine in many instances. It is used also in 

 making tobacco boxes and for the bottoms and sash of show cases. 



BY-PRODUCTS. 



Considering the great extent of the white pine forests and the 

 important part their wood has played in the industrial development 

 of the country, the by-products are few. As early as 1672 a law 

 directed that the Plymouth Colony should make 10 barrels of tar a 

 year. That quantity was very small, and probably pitch pine con- 

 tributed as much as white pine. The turpentine or resin from the 

 tree has been collected in a small way as a domestic remedy for 

 rheumatism, ulcers, burns, frostbites, cuts 3 and bruises, but the medic- 

 inal value of the product is open to question. Sometimes the macer- 

 ated inner bark was substituted for the resin, and a sirup made from 

 it was believed to be efficacious in the treatment of whooping cough. 

 A distillation from green cones was once believed effective in remov- 

 ing wrinkles from the skin if applied liberally as a wash. White 

 pine sawdust is frequently employed in the manufacture of porous 

 bricks. The dust is mixed with the clay or pulverized shale of which 

 the bricks are made, and in the process of burning the heat destroys 

 the sawdust and leaves the bricks porous. The conversion of white 

 pine sawdust into gas for use in gas engines has been suggested, but 

 no claim is made that it is better than the sawdust of California red- 

 wood or probably several other woods. The ground bark has been 

 employed as an astringent, and the resin is recommended as an in- 

 gredient of cough sirup. In New England, and perhaps elsewhere, 

 the shavings in planing mills are baled and sold as horse bedding in 

 stables. 



DISEASES. 



The diseases and injuries to which the white pine is peculiarly 

 liable have more to do with retarding or preventing the growth of 

 wood than in damaging it after it has grown. Blight, either with 

 or without fungus attack, occasionally injures growing pine in dif- 

 ferent parts of its region. The young trees have thin bark, and a 



