372 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



from the coast westward to beyond the Great Lakes. A goodly number 

 of other trees mingle with the pines in this northern portion of the 

 Atlantic forest — basswood, elm, birch, sugar maple and ash among the 

 broad-leaved species, and the black spruce, hemlock and cedar among 

 conifers, but the pine everywhere gives the broadest and most pro- 

 nounced feature to the woodland. This northern pine forest follows 

 the highest ridges of the Allegbanies quite to their southern limits, 

 conspicuous in the mountain landscape as an evergreen belt — the hem- 

 lock (or what is left of its once grand forests after the axe of the 

 lumberman and " bark-peeler ") predominating in certain districts. 



Somewhere in the mid-New England region, and in New York 

 along the watershed of the St. Lawrence, one who travels with an eye 

 for trees will notice the ever-increasing number and variety of broad- 

 leaved species toward the south. Among the scattered pines appears 

 the massy leafage of oaks, hickories, chestnuts, beeches and other hard- 

 woods, which denotes a borderland in tree life — the northern edge 

 of that vast deciduous forest the summer canopy of which, in aboriginal 

 times, covered the Ohio and Mississippi basins and the Piedmont land 

 of the Atlantic seaboard to beyond the valley of the Delaware. Even 

 to-day there are wide areas still covered by remnants of this magnificent 

 interior forest of the continent. And what a wealth of species ! No- 

 where in the temperate zone may we find such an assemblage of splendid 

 tree forms save possibly in eastern Asia. The tall tulip tree with its 

 gorgeous blossoms and broad leaves of shining green; the array of 

 magnolias, rivaled in beauty and variety only in the Chinese region; 

 the gums (both tupelos and liquidambar) ; the flowering dogwood ; the 

 buckeyes, locusts, catalpas, beeches, plane trees, chestnuts, ashes, elms, 

 cherries, a great variety of hawthorns, the hackberry, persimmon and 

 sassafras; the hickories, walnuts and butternuts; the basswood, maple 

 and sourwood; the hornbeams, and upwards of twenty species of oaks, 

 not to mention a host of other less familiar trees and underwoods. 

 This is the forest that nature would spread over the land again should 

 the white man cease in his toilsome civilization. Those of us born 

 with a love for the woods can only regret the loss and cling the more 

 tenaciously to every woodland tract that happily we may still have the 

 right to protect. 



On the coast plain of the southern Atlantic region another form of 

 tree-life gives character to the forest. Here the long-leaf pine and 

 other allied species find a congenial home, the monotonous "piney 

 woods" covering wide tracts of level, sandy country. From the 

 earliest times tar and turpentine have given local color to the commerce 

 of the region where this pine abounds. In low-lying swamp districts 

 and along river shores the bald cypress, with its curious " knees " lifted 

 above the submerging flood, is a conspicuous tree in the landscape and 

 entirely peculiar to this Atlantic coast region. 



