n8 Forests and Trees 



fence posts, telephone and telegraph poles, and railway ties is 

 obtained from trees belonging to the great pine family. 



The juice also is valuable. It furnishes resin and turpentine 

 and was formerly the source from which tar and pitch were 

 obtained, but these substances are now extracted from coal. 



No trees have been so extensively used by the human race as 

 the pines and cedars, and none have been so often mentioned 

 in history and poetry. The cedars of Lebanon furnished the 

 timber used in the erection Of King Solomon's Temple, and in 

 constructing the ships in which the early Phoenician sailed 

 westward past the Pillars of Hercules ; it was among the pines 

 on Mount Ida that (Enone mourned for Paris; Horace wrote 

 an ode to the pine tree in his garden, and Scott used the pine 

 as the crest of Clan Alpine. 



I. THE PINES 



Genus Pinus 



The pines are all evergreen trees, although sometimes on 

 high mountains they are so reduced in size as to be little more 

 than shrubs. They have long needle-shaped leaves which 

 always grow from the branch in little clumps or fascicles sur- 

 rounded at the base by some small dry scales. These leaves 

 or needles are from one to eleven inches long and the number in 

 a fascicle varies from two to five. 



In young trees the bark is smooth, thin, and often greenish in 

 color, but as the trees get older it becomes thickened and much 

 broken by furrows, while the outer part easily drops off in 

 scales. The bark of the mature tree is brown, gray or tinged 

 with red. 



The wood in some trees is soft, white and easily worked; 

 while in others it is reddish, and rather hard and brittle, owing 

 to the large amount of resin it contains. 



The cones take two or sometimes three years to mature, and 



