| oe THE PITCH PINE. 73 
young pines. These continue to grow for seven or eight years 
under the shelter of the broom, the leaves of which annually 
mingle with the soil and fertilize it. After this period, the pines 
over-top the broom and often kill it by their shade. At the age 
of ten or twelve years, they begin to thin the forest, to make tar, 
and to get branches for continuing the process of sowing. In 
about twenty years, they begin to cut down the trees to extract 
the resin. ‘These forests, situated on the downs along the sea, 
protect, from the continual action of the west wind, the whole 
space situated behind them, and thus, at the same time that 
they themselves furnish an important product, they secure those 
of the rest of the country.” 
He ends the account by saying, that he has herborized for a 
whole day in the forests sown by Bremontier on sand com- 
pletely arid, and on which, before him, scarce a trace of vege- 
tation could be seen. 
By pursuing, on the waste sands in many parts of this State, 
the course which has been so successful in France, forests for 
fuel and tar and lampblack. and perhaps for ship timber, may 
be formed on land which is now not only utterly valueless but 
in many places inconvenient and dangerous. ‘ihe plant to be 
selected to protect the young pine may be the sweet fern, 
(Comptonia), or perhaps the very broom which has been used 
in F’rance, as its seed could be easily imported, and there can 
be no doubt that it would grow on this side of the Atlantic as 
well as on the other. 
Another use to be made of the pitch pine, is one to which the 
Scotch pine, which it much resembles, is put in England, that 
of serving as nurse to tender deciduous trees. 
There is a circumstance about the pitch pine which I have 
never observed in any other tree of this family, and believe to be 
peculiar. Its stump throws up sprouts the spring after the stem 
has been felled. ‘T'hese continue to flourish, with apparent 
vigor, for several years, but I have never seen them attain any 
considerable height. The fallen trunk itself throws out sprouts 
in the succeeding summer; and the bundles of leaves of both 
are remarkable for issuing from the axil of a single leaf, in the 
same manner as is observed in the young plant. 
11 
