616 REPORT OF STATE GEOLOGIST. 



P. echinata Mill. Yellow Pine. Spruce Pine. 



(P. mitis Michx.) 

 Found in the southern counties. This tree does not reach its full 

 development in this State, in man}' regions being but little more than 

 a shrub. In its full development it reaches a height of 100 feet, 

 with a diameter of from 3 to 4J feet. It is largely manufactured 

 into lumber, and is the most valuable of the yellow pines. 



LARIX Adans. 



L. laricina (Du Roi) Koch. Black Larch. Tamarack. 

 (L. Americana Micbx.) 

 Found only in northern counties, where it is fairly abundant in 

 wet soils, being the character tree of the so-called "tamarack 

 swamps." The species is rapidly disappearing as the result of drain- 

 age. A tree from eighty to one hundred feet high with a diameter 

 of from two to three feet. Wood heavy, hard, very strong and 

 durable in contact with the soil. Used for posts, telegraph poles 

 and railway ties. 



TSUGA Carr. 



T. Canadensis (L.) Carr. Hemlock.* 



This species occurs in Putnam County in a single location of con- 

 siderable extent. I quote from a letter of Mr. W. H. Ragan, who 

 sent at the same time abundant specimens : "In the northeast por- 

 tion of this (Putnam) county, Jackson Township, on the sandstone 

 bluffs of Walnut Creek, in and along its deep and tortuous canyon, 

 the hemlock spruce has existed in its native beauty from a time long 

 anterior to the present historic period. The general course of Wal- 

 nut Creek through Jackson Township is southwesterly, and its can- 

 yon is deep (for this comparatively level country) and tortuous. 

 The upper geological formation is a shelly limestone, that rests upon 

 a light blue or gray sandstone, through which the stream has worn 

 its way to a depth of fifty or sixty feet, forming almost perpendicular 

 bluffs, first on one side of the creek and then on the other. On these 

 bluffs and extending back over small portions of the adjacent level 

 lands and intermingling with our more common forest trees a hem- 

 lock grove, now largely cut away for its timber and its bark and to 

 make way for the plow and other implements of the farmer, was dis- 

 covered by the pioneer settlers who located in this region in the 

 early years of the third decade of this century. This isolated grove 

 occupied its limited area in the midst of the giant forest of deciduous 



'•'The hemlock occurs also in Russell Township, Putnam County, on the banks of Rac- 

 coon Creek, two miles northeast of Portland Mills —W. S. B. 



