I 24 ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 



THE HEMLOCK. 



The northern part of the United States and Canada abounds largely in this 

 tree. Although not remarkable for its beauty except when young, its uniform- 

 ity and great height give it a very stately appearance. Being seventy or eighty 

 feet high and having a circumference of from six to nine feet, the timber ob- 

 tained from it is necessarily large, but because of its tendency to split, is not 

 very highly esteemed for building purpose. The bark is very valuable for 

 tanning. The leaves are two-rowed, flat and obtuse. Different varieties of this 

 same species are the Black and White Spruce. The former unlike the Hem- 

 lock is a valuable timber tree. From it the essence of spruce is obtained which 

 is used for making spruce beer. From the fibres of the roots of the White 

 Spruce the Canadians get the thread with which they sew their birch bark 

 canoes, the seams being made water tight with its resin. Both of the last- 

 named varieties have quadrangular leaves. The most important advantages to 

 the State are the bark it yields, the shade it gives and to some extent the 

 timber obtained from it. MAY I. BACHELDER. 



THE PINE TREE. 



The pines, which are distinguished from all other trees, by their foliage which 

 consists of needle-shaped leaves in clusters of two to five, surrounded at the 

 base by some of the withered bud scales, which form a sheath around them, 

 constitute a large and interesting class of American forest trees. The most 

 valuable species is that which is known as the Georgia Pitch Pine. Toward 

 the north, the long-leaved pine makes its appearance near Norfolk, in Vir- 

 ginia, where the pine barrens begin. It seems to be especially assigned to 

 dry, sandy soils; and it is found almost without interruption, in the lower part 

 of the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida, over a tract more than six hundred miles 

 long, from north-east to south-wast, and more than one hundred miles broad 

 from the sea toward the mountains. 



The pines with the exception of one species in the Canaries, are confined to 

 America, Europe and Asia, and are more abundant in the temperate and cooler 

 portions of these. No trees are so useful to the arts of c vi'ized life as these, as 

 they not only furnish in abundance kinds of wood for which there is no proper 

 substitute, but their other products are of great utility, the abundant juice of 

 some species, which consists of a resin dissolved in a volatile oil, affords turpen- 

 tines of various kinds, spirits of turpentine, resin, tar and other minor products. 



In the northern States, the lands which at the commencement of their settle- 

 ments were covered with pitch pine, were exhausted in twenty-five or thirty 

 years, and for more than half a century have ceased to furnish tar. In several 

 species the nuts are edible, and are not only eaten by wild animals, but are col- 

 lected for food. In ornamental planting, pines are exceedingly useful, as they 

 present a great variety of habit and foliage, from species which never rise above 

 a few feet up to those which have trunks large enough for a ship's mast. 



The pine barrens are of vast extent and are covered with trees of forest 

 growth, but they cannot be all rendered profitable, from the difficulty of com- 

 municating with the sea. LOUISE YOUNGS. 



