CHAPTER III 

 WHITE PINE TYPE 



General Conditions. — This is the type from which the colon- 

 ists obtained the masts and shipbuilding timber to which Pepys 

 made such feeling reference in his diary — 



" From New England ships come home safe to Falmouth 

 with masts for the King; which is a blessing mighty unex- 

 pected, and without which we must have failed the next 

 year." 

 Here were trained the loggers who have made Maine so famous 

 by their exploits with axe and peevy and in this type they have 

 gone westward thru New York and Pennsylvania to the Lake 

 States as the virgin supplies were exhausted on the Atlantic coast. 

 Its exact boundaries are frequently difficult to delimit where the 

 type merges into the hardwood type but roughly it covers the 

 lower parts of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachu- 

 setts and the more elevated portions of Connecticut. In New 

 York and the Lake States it is a lowland type but only occurs in 

 the northern parts. 



The growing season is distinctly longer than with the two types 

 previously considered. Ordinarily frosts do not occur between 

 May I and September 15 so that there is a vegetative period of 

 about five months. Moreover, the temperatures are higher. For 

 the year the mean is 50° F. while during the summer the maxi- 

 mum is 100° F. with an average of 65° F. This means consider- 

 ably more transpiration and evaporation than with the spruce 

 and hardwood types. 



Another factor which decreases the total available moisture is 

 the lessened precipitation. This is mainly the result of lower 

 altitude above sea level. The hardwood and spruce types cover 

 the mountains and hills which intercept the moisture-laden 

 winds from the west. Consequently instead of being over 45 



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