EVERGREEN" ORNAMENTAL TREES. 
255 
adverting to their numerous and important uses. In the 
United States, full four-fifths of all the houses built are con- 
structed of the White and Yellow Pine, chiefly of the former. 
Soft, easily worked, light and fine in texture, it is almost 
universally employed in carpentry, and for all the purposes 
of civil architecture; while the tall stately trunks furnish 
masts and spars, not only for our own vessels, but many of 
those of England. A great commerce is therefore carried 
on in the timber of this tree, and vast quantities of the 
boards, etc., are annually exported to Europe. The Yellow 
and Pitch Pine furnish much of the enormous supplies of 
fuel consumed by the great number of steamboats employed 
in navigating our numerous inland rivers. The Long- 
leaved Pine is the great timber tree of the southern states ; 
and when we take into account all its various products, we 
must admit it to be the most valuable tree of the whole 
family. The consumption of the wood of this tree in build- 
ing, in the southern states, is immense ; and its sap furnishes 
nearly all the turpentine, tar, pitch, and rosin, used in this 
country, or exported to Europe. The turpentine flows from 
large incisions made in the trunk (into boxes fastened to 
the side of the trees for that purpose) during the whole of 
the spring and summer. Spirit of turpentine is obtained 
from this by distillation. Tar is procured by burning the 
dead wood in kilns, when it flows out in a current from a 
conduit made in the bottom. Pitch is prepared by boiling 
tar until it is about one half diminished in bulk ; and rosin 
is the residuum of the distillation when spirit of turpentine 
is made. The Carolinas produce all these in the greatest 
abundance, and so long ago as 1807, the exportation of 
them to England alone amounted to nearly 8800,000 in 
that single year. 
