220 TREES 



hardship, the conifers would never have held their own as 

 they have done. They inhabit regions where conditions 

 discourage all but a few of the broad-leaved trees. 



THE PINES 



In a forest of needle-leaved evergreens it is perfectly easy 

 to distinguish the pines by their leaves. Look along the 

 twigs and you will find the needles arranged in bundles, 

 with a papery, enclosing sheath at the base. Follow 

 farther back and these sheaths are missing, but on long 

 stretches between the growing tip and the leafless part of 

 the branch the characteristic sheathed needle-bundles de- 

 clare this evergreen to be a pine. No other conifer has 

 this trait, no pine grows but shows it every day in the 

 year. 



One half of the eighty known species of pines grow in 

 North America. Pure forests of great extent are found in 

 the Southern states, in the Great Lakes region, and on the 

 mountain slopes in the western and northern parts of the 

 continent. Smaller areas occur in the Eastern states. 

 Very soon these forests must be spoken of in the past tense, 

 for a century of destructive lumbering has almost cleared 

 the Northeast of pine timber, and though the exploitation 

 of the pine forests of the South and about the Great Lakes 

 came later, as population increased in the Middle West, the 

 work has progressed much more rapidly. The idea of for- 

 est conservation, crystallized into federal law by popular 

 demand, has come too late to save from wasteful exploita- 

 tion the superb pine forests west of the Rockies. Yet 

 thousands of acres of forests are now under government 



