TIMBER PINES OF THE SOUTHERN UNITED STATES. 



INTRODUCTION. 



In ignorance of tlie nature and without appreciation of the economic value of their resources, 

 pioneers sijuander and destroy without regard to the future the riches they find. We have done 

 so in the United States and are continuing to do so althougli the i)ioneering stage should have 

 been passed, especially with our forest resources. We have exploited them as if they were mines, 

 instead of crops which can be harvested and reproduced continuously, and we have done so iu a 

 most wasteful manner; nay, we have by irrational methods of exploitation, no doubt due in part 

 to the necessities of a rayidly developing country, in many cases destroyed the conditions for 

 natural reproduction of the more valuable timber species. Fire and indiscriminate pasturing have 

 also assisted in the process of deterioration. 



We are just beginning to realize that our timber sujjplies are not unlimited; that our 

 magnificent forest .resources have been despoiled and need at least more consideration; that 

 sooner or later forestry will become, nay, is now, a necessity. 



Forestry is the art of producing, managing, and harvesting wood crops. To be successful iu 

 this art it is of course necessary to understand the nature of the crop— to be acquainted with the 

 life history, the conditions of development required by each species of tree composing the crop. 

 Such knowledge can be in part, at least, derived from observations made in the natural forests, 

 and from these observations the manner in which the different species should be treated and rules 

 of management may be determined. 



The time for the application of forestry — that is, rational methods of treating the wood crop — 

 has not, as many seem to suppose, come only when the natural forest growths have been despoiled 

 am. deteriorated. On the contrary, when the ax is for the first time applied, then is the time for 

 the application of forestry, for it is possible so to cut the original natural forest crop that it can 

 reproduce itself iu a superior manner. The judicious and systematic use of the ax alone, in the 

 hands of the forester, will secure this result. 



Hence these monographs on the life history of the Southern pines have been written primarily 

 to enable the owners of Southern pineries, who are now engaged iu exploiting them, to so modify 

 their treatment of the same as to insure continued reproduction instead of complete exhaustion, 

 which is tlireatened under present methods. 



The pines are the most important timber trees of the world. They attain this importance 

 from a combination of properties. In the first place, they possess such qualities of strength and 

 elasticity, combined with comparatively light weight and ease of working, as to fit them specially 

 for use in construction which requires the largest amount of wood; next, they occur as forests in 

 the temperate zones, often to the exclusion of every other sjiecies, so that their exploitation is 

 made ea.sy and profitable; thirdly, they are readily reproduced and tolerably quick growers; and, 

 lastly, they occupy the poorest soils, producing valuable crops from the dry sands, and hence are 

 of the greatest value from the standpoint of national economy. 



The Southern States abound in those sandy soils which are the home of the pine tribes and 

 were once covered with seemingV,v boundless forests of the same. There are still large areas 

 untouched, yet the greater portion of the primeval forest has not only been culled of its best 

 timber, but the repeated contiagrations which follow the lumbering, and, still more disastrously 

 the turpentine gatherers" operations, have destroyed not only the remainder of the original growth^ 

 but the vegetable mold and the young aftergrowth, leaving thousands of sijuare miles as blackened 

 wastes, devoid of usefulness, and reducing by so much the potential wealth of the South. 



There are, in general, four belts of pine forests of difl'erent types recognizable, their boundaries 

 running in general direction somewhat parallel to the coast line: (1) The coast plain, or pine-barren 

 flats, within the tidewater region, 10 to 30 miles wide, once occupied mainly by the most valuable 



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