The Pines 



grounds of the rich and the poor, pines are planted for shade and 

 shelter and ornament. Only in very smoky cities, St. Louis and 

 Pittsburg, for instance, do pines with other conifers decline after 

 a few years of growth. It is believed that sulphur and other 

 substances in the noxious gases that constantly pour from great 

 chimneys choke the evergreens. Nobody is able yet to give a 

 final answer to the question. It is now under investigation. 



The by-products of pine trees include oil, pitch, turpentine, 

 and rosin, products of the resin that impregnates the wood of 

 pitch pines. Minor products are the seeds of the nut pines, used 

 as food; pine wool, spun from the leaves of certain species; and 

 pine shoots used for Christmas decoration. 



All pines are evergreens and cone bearers. They are dis- 

 tinguished from other genera of the family Coniferae by bearing 

 their needle-like leaves in clusters of i to 5 leaves, each of which 

 is enclosed at its base by a sheath made of papery scales. No 

 other conifer has this sheath. The soft pines, so called from 

 their soft, light wood, shed their leaf sheaths as soon as the 

 young leaves are fully developed. The pitch pines, so called be- 

 cause their heavy, dark-coloured wood is full of resin, retain the 

 leaf sheath until the leaves are shed. 



In the lumber trade there is a certain fine scorn of "techni- 

 cal names," and a consequent confusion in the use of local and 

 trade names of the kinds of pines. This is unfortunate, for 

 woods that resemble each other so closely as to deceive experi- 

 enced men have often very different ways of behaving in use. 

 Lumbermen and carpenters are misled by dependence on trade 

 names, and so are engineers and architects, to the great disad- 

 vantage of those whose interests they are supposed to serve in- 

 telligently. 



" Hard pine " is a carpenter's term applied to pines whose 

 wood is heavy, close and resinous. It includes everything but 

 soft pine among staple lumber pines. 



The " hard pines " are P. pahistris, P. taeda, P. echinata and 

 P. heterophylla in the South ; P. poiiderosa, and P. ponderosa, 

 van Jeffreyi, in the West, and P. resinosa in the East and North. 



" Yellow pine," a very vague and general colour designa- 

 tion, includes the Southern hard pines named above, also P. 

 rigida in the East, and P. ponderosa in the West. 



" Pitch pine " is a term applied to species whose wood is 



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