PINE 24:9 



3,231. c' -535— -4:27. v' -93—618. The characters and quaHty 

 of the wood vary much, according to cHmate and soil. Conversely 

 to what is the case with Oaks, the more slowly grown Pines of high 

 latitudes or mountains, having narrower annual rings, with a pro- 

 portionally smaller amount of spring-wood, are heavier, denser, 

 and stronger than those of the South, or of plains, or from rich soils. 

 English-grown Pine is thick-baited, carrying a great amount — 

 often 4 inches — of sapwood, and is generally only used locally, not 

 being nearly as durable as Larch. Scotch-grown wood is of better 

 quality, and is imported into the North of England, chiefly as 

 mine-timber. The Pine from Prussia and Central Russia is large, 

 heavy, hard, resinous, and of excellent quality for sleepers, paving- 

 blocks, masts, beams, and planks ; that from Archangel being the 

 strongest and most durable imported, though subject to heart- 

 shakes and surface-checks, and that from St. Petersburg sounder, 

 but more sappy ; whilst from farther North — as from GefLe and 

 Soderhamn m Central Sweden — a wood of high quality is shipped, 

 and from the White Sea a closer-grown, less resinous kind, more 

 suitable for joinery. 



The sapwood is yellowish to reddish-white, the heart only be- 

 coming distinct as brownish-red in drying, and the wood being on 

 the whole whiter when grown on plains, redder when on hills. The 

 annual rings are very distinct, owing to the broad, sharply defined 

 zone of dark autumn- wood that characterizes the " hard Pines," 

 and they are slightly wavy. The resin-ducts are numerous, very 

 large and distinct, and mostly in peripheral zones near the outer 

 margin of the rings. The pith-rays consist of two or three rows of 

 thin-walled parenchyma, with large oval pits on their radial walls, 

 each almost as wide as a tracheid, and two or three rows of tracheids 

 above and below, with very unevenly thickened walls and small 

 bordered pits. As the branches are in whorls, the knots serve to 

 distinguish Pine from Larch, in which they are scattered. In 

 Northern Europe the Pine is the chief timber used in house-building, 

 both for framework of hewn logs, walls of logs in the round, and clap- 

 boards ; in Russia Pine-logs are used for corduroy roads, and the 

 use of the wood for fuel is universal. Baltic Pine was imported to 

 and used in our east-coast towns for flooring, wainscoting, and 

 joinery in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, when 

 Oak was the chief building timber employed in England. Not till 

 the beginning of the eighteenth was it recognized that the Scots 

 Eir was the same species ; the high price of foreign timber during 

 the Napoleonic wars led to the clearing of the indigenous pine- 

 forests of Northern Scotland ; and the excellence, easy working, 

 and great durabihty of the timber obtained from them broke down 

 the prejudice in favour of Oak, and resulted in the great consumption 

 of Baltic, White Sea, and Canadian Pine during the nineteenth 



