The Pines 



uplands of scant fertility. Disiribution, Connecticut to Florida; 

 west to Illinois, Kansas and Texas. Not continuous. Uses: 

 Lumber used as P. palustris is. Young trees yield turpentine 

 and pitch. Rarely planted. Reforests adjacent fields and lum- 

 bered areas by copious seeds and vigorous suckers. 



The shortleaf pine is short leaved only in comparison with 

 the exceedingly long needles of P. palustris. The leaves are 

 about the length of those of the Austrian pine, so familiar in cul- 

 tivation, and beside which the Scotch and white pines are 

 short-leaved species. 



Next to the longleaf in rank, the shortleaf pine is one of 

 the most important lumber trees in the Eastern and Southern 

 states, just a shade inferior to the former in quality, this species 

 is likely by its vigour and wide range to become greatest of them 

 all in economic importance as the exploitation of the timber 

 lands of the South progresses. Against the destructive agencies 

 at work the longleaf cannot hold its own. Its ultimate extinc- 

 tion must follow present methods of lumbering and orcharding. 

 But the shortleaf pine, less sensitive to injuries, more prolific of 

 seeds, able to renew itself indefinitely by throwing up suckers 

 from the stump, and to survive shading of its saplings better 

 than the longleaf and Cuban pines, has a distinct advantage over 

 these, its compeers in the South and East. The distribution of the 

 species is over a vaster area, and each grove is the centre of a 

 growing and widening territory. It industriously colonises adja- 

 cent land abandoned by the farmer or the lumberman. In a free 

 fight with hardwood trees this pine is the winner, and the 

 young forests it is planting will be marketable in 80 to 100 years. 



The forest centre of this species is west of the Mississippi 

 and below the Arkansas River. This great tract was practically 

 untouched at the time the tenth Census Report, issued in 1880, 

 estimated its merchantable timber then standing at 87,000,000,000 

 feet, board measure. This counted only the area in Texas, 

 Louisiana and Arkansas, and left out the forests in Missouri and 

 Oklahoma. There is little of the vast Eastern territory once covered 

 by the shortleaf pine that has not been worked to some extent 

 by lumbermen, especially where railroads make possible the dis- 

 tribution of the lumber. In the past twenty-five years astonishing 

 inroads have been made upon the Southwestern forests. 



While inferior to P. palustris, lumber of P. echinata is often 

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