148 THE PINES 



meter have been found, but it is seldom that one two 

 hundred feet high and seven feet in diameter is seen. Its 

 rapidity of growth is about the same as that of the Eastern 

 White Pine, but its long life six hundred or more years 

 permits it far to surpass that tree in bigness. As age 

 advances, its slender lower limbs die and fall off and the 

 tree will show a clean, straight, and slightly tapering stem 

 for one half of its height, and its crown loses its conical 

 form, sometimes showing a broad flat top sixty or eighty 

 feet across. This habit of dropping its lower limbs seems 

 to occur whether or not it is crowded in early life, and 

 makes the tree exceptionally valuable as a lumber pro- 

 ducer. No other Pine can show such wide clear stuff, and 

 it is surpassed in that respect by few other timber trees 

 in the world. 



The wood closely resembles that of the Eastern White 

 Pine. It is light, soft, but not quite so much so as its 

 Eastern relative, straight-grained, is easily worked, light 

 red-brown in color, with rather thin, cream-colored sap- 

 wood, and with little difference in color or character be- 

 tween spring and summer wood. Its medullary rays are 

 small and inconspicuous and it seasons well and shrinks 

 moderately in seasoning. It holds glue well and takes paint 

 and varnish admirably. It can be used wherever White 

 Pine can be, and, while not fully equal to the latter in all 

 respects, it is no mean rival, and it is superior in its ability 

 to furnish wide stuff. 



The cones are shaped almost precisely like those of the 

 White Pine, but are very much larger, seldom being less 

 than ten inches long and three inches in diameter, and 

 frequently sixteen or eighteen inches long and four inches 

 through the largest part. The seeds average about one half 

 inch in length and three eighths inch wide, are flattened 

 somewhat, and are esteemed a choice edible by men and 

 animals. The wing attached to the seed is about three 

 fourths of an inch long and one half inch wide. On account 

 of the seeds being edible there is little hope of natural re- 



