[. 1. THE PITCH PINE. 71 
into a cart and carried to an abandoned tract of ground, com- 
pletely inundated with dmft sand, and capable of producing 
merely the most useless weeds. With great haste the trees 
were planted in this desert, amid the merriment and derision 
of all who witnessed what was considered so fruitless an under- 
taking. But the experiment was perfectly successful, and in 
four straight lines stand at this moment ninety-seven pines, of 
which number one, and the finest, is a white pine, all the rest 
being pitch pines. They have attained the height of twenty or 
more feet, and the measures of the circumference of several 
are appended, as follows:—the white pine, two feet two inches; 
pitch pine, two feet four inches; two feet six inches; two feet 
six and one-half inches; two feet nine inches; two feet ten 
inches. ‘The average circumference may be estimated at one 
foot nine inches. Several young trees are springing up beneath 
this little artificial forest, and the original plantation, beginning 
to produce seed, will soon cause a perceptible difference in the 
nature of the plain.” 
These plants were probably four or five years old when trans- 
planted. We thus find them of a diameter of from seven to 
ten or eleven inches, or an average of seven for all, in about 
twenty-five years. Mr. Russell recommends “to transplant 
when the new shoot or growth is about half an mch in length.” 
Young trees in every stage of growth may be found along the 
borders of pine woods, particularly on the edges of ponds and 
the sandy banks of streams. In the first year, they rarely ex- 
ceed three or four inches in height; in the second, they some- 
what more than double their growth, but still look very slender 
and delicate; in the third year, they begin to assume some ap- 
pearance of vigor, and often reach the height of eighteen inches 
or two feet. For the first two or three years the leaves are 
single; afterwards they appear in bundles from the axil of the 
single leaves. After the third year, the growth in favorable 
situations is rapid, sometimes at the rate of two or three feet a 
year. The best age for transplanting 1s two or three years. 
The pitch pine has the great advantage of not being injuri- 
ously, at least not fatally, affected by salt water. Michaux 
observed it growing where the ground was overflowed by the 
