AMERICAN FOREST TREES 33 



mills. A saw large enough for most eastern and southern timbers would 

 not slab a sugar pine log. From four to six feet were common sizes, 

 and the lumberman despised anything small. 



In late years sugar pine operators have looked beyond the local 

 markets, and have been sending their lumber to practically every state 

 in the Union, except probably the extreme South. It comes in direct 

 competition with the white pine of New England and the Lake States. 

 The two woods have many points of resemblance. The white pine 

 would probably have lost no markets to the California wood if the best 

 grades could still be had at moderate prices; but most of the white pine 

 region has been stripped of its best timber, and the resulting scarcity in 

 the high grades has been, in part, made good by sugar pine. Some 

 manufacturers of doors and frames claim that sugar pine is more satis- 

 factory than white pine, because of better behavior under climatic 

 changes. It is said to shrink, swell, and warp less than the eastern wood. 



Sugar pine has displaced white pine to a very small extent only, in 

 comparison with the field still held by the eastern wood, whose annual 

 output is about thirty times that of the California species. Then* uses 

 are practically the same except that only the good grades of sugar pine 

 go east, and the corresponding grades of white pine west, and therefore 

 there is no competition between the poor grades of the two woods. The 

 annual demand for sugar and white pine east of the Rocky Mountains 

 is probably represented as an average in Illinois, where 2,000,000 feet of 

 the former and 175,000,000 of the latter are used yearly. 



While there is a large amount of mature sugar pine ready for 

 lumbermen, the prospect of future supplies from new growth is not 

 entirely satisfactory. The western yellow pine is mixed with it through- 

 out most of its range, and is more than a match for it in taking possession 

 of vacant ground. It is inferred from this fact that the relative positions 

 of the two species in future forests will change at the expense of sugar 

 pine. It endures shade when small, and this enables it to obtain a start 

 among other species; but as it increases in size it becomes intolerant of 

 shade, and if it does not receive abundance of light it will not grow. A 

 forest fire is nearly certain to kill the small sugar pines, but old trunks 

 are protected by their thick bark. Few species have fewer natural 

 enemies. Very small trees are occasionally attacked by mistletoe 

 (Arceuthobium occidentale) and succumb or else are stunted in their 

 growth. 



MEXICAN PINON (Pinus cembroides) is known also as nut pine, pinon pine 

 and stone-seed Mexican pinon. It is one of the smallest of the native pines of this 

 country. The tree is fifteen or twenty feet high and a few inches in diameter, but 

 in sheltered canyons in Arizona it sometimes attains a height of fifty or sixty feet with 



