224 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



we have reason to hope that they will become naturalized in 

 our climate. 



We must not leave this extensive family of trees, without 

 adverting to their numerous and important uses. In the 

 United States, full four-fifths of all the houses built, are con- 

 structed of the White and Yellow Pine, chiefly of the former. 

 Soft, easily worked, light and fine in texture, it is almost uni- 

 versally employed in carpentry, and for all the purposes of 

 civil architecture; while the tall stately trunks, furnish masts 

 and spars, not only for our own vessels, but many of those of 

 England. A great commerce is therefore carried on in the 

 timber of this tree, and vast quantities of the boards, etc. are 

 annually exported to Europe. The Yellow and Pitch Pine, 

 furnish the enormous supplies of fuel consumed by the great 

 number of steamboats employed in navigating our numerous 

 inland rivers. The Long-leaved Pine is the great timber 

 tree of the southern states; and when we take into account 

 all its various products, we must admit it to be the most val- 

 uable tree of the whole family. The consumption of the 

 wood of this tree in building, in the southern states, is im- 

 mense; and its sap furnishes nearly all the turpentine, tar, 

 pitch, and rosin, used in this country, or exported to Europe. 

 The turpentine flows from large incisions made in the trunk, 

 (into boxes fastened to the side of the trees for that purpose,) 

 during the whole of the spring and summer. Spirit of tur- 

 pentine is obtained from this by distillation. Tar is pro- 

 cured by burning the dead wood in kilns, when it flows out 

 in a current from a conduit made in the bottom. Pitch is 

 prepared by boiling tar until it is about one half diminished 

 in bulk ; and rosin is the residium of the distillation, when 

 spirit of turpentine is made. The Carolinas produce all these 

 in the greatest abundance, and so long ago as in 1807, the 

 exportation of them to England alone, amounted to nearly 

 $800,000 in that single year. 



