increased production by the much reduced prices of these articles 

 ruling during the last two years. In these sums, the quantities 

 required for home consumption are not included. If those, and 

 the quantities of sawed lumber and squared timber derived from 

 the pine belt within the confines of our State, and which are 

 exported from Pensacola, so far the chief centre of the lumber 

 business on this coast, are considered, the amounts given above 

 will certainly be doubled. Lastly, with the exhaustion of the 

 yellow pine forest that encircled Pensacola bay, and of those 

 in convenient reach upon the coast of continental Florida, a very 

 large quota of the saw logs are drawn from Alabama by the trib- 

 utaries and head waters of the Escambia and the Perdido river. 

 The average height of the yellow pine in the virgin forest is 

 from sixty to seventy feet, with a diameter of 12 to 18 inches for 

 two-thirds of its height. It is of slow growth, particularly at the 

 later periods of its life. According to the number of annual 

 rings, trees of the above dimensions must have reached an age 

 of 60 to 70 years. The reproduction of a tree from the seed, fur- 

 nishing an equal supply of timber, would at this rate take about 

 two generations. It is a poor seeder, as the younger Michaux ob- 

 served. In unfruitful years, a forest of hundreds of miles may 

 be ransacked without finding a single cone, and these, according 

 to my observations, are far more frequent than fruitful ones. In 

 its struggle for existence in our days, the odds of a survival of 

 its kind amongst the arborescent vegetation that disputes its 

 ground are greatly against it. Taken from the flat and moist 

 lands, and it is replaced almost exclusively by the pond and old 

 field pine; the hilly, broken, dry upland, denuded of the grand 

 old pine forest, is with surprising rapidity covered by a dense 

 and scrubby growth of blackjack, turkey oak, scarlet and upland 

 willow oak, above which, seldom a young yellow pine raises its head, 

 crowned with its large white-fringed terminal bud. Full of resin- 

 ous juices, through all stages of its life, the young trees are not 

 as able to withstand the raging fires that annually devastate the 

 woods, as the less resinous species, and the deciduous leafed 

 trees ; besides that being of much slower growth, this noble tree 

 is doomed to extinction, if not protected by the aid of man. On 

 tracts sheltered from the invasion of fire, groves of young trees, 

 from 15 to 20 fe£t high, can be observed around Mobile, testify- 

 ing that its existence for the future can in some measure be se- 

 cured, if protected from these destructive influences, unneces- 

 sarily caused by man. The utmost efforts by an enlightened 

 community, should be made through active and efficient State 



