WHITE PINE. 
91 
October to release the seeds, of which a part are left adhering to the 
turpentine that exudes from, the scales. 
This tree is diffused, though not uniformly, over a vast extent of country ; 
it is incapable of supporting intense cold, and still less extreme heat. My 
father, in returning from Hudson’s Bay, after traversing three hundred 
miles without perceiving a vestige of it, first observed it about forty leagues 
from the mouth of the Mistassin, which discharges itself into Lake St. 
John, in Canada, in the latitude of 48° 50'. Two degrees further south 
he found it common, which was doubtless owing rather to a difference of 
soil than of climate. From his observations and my own, it appears to be 
most abundant between the 43d and 47th degrees of latitude; further 
south it is found in the valleys and on the declivities of the Alleghanies 
to their termination, but at a distance from the mountains on either side 
its growth is forbidden by the warmth of the climate. It is said, with 
great probability, to be multiplied near the source of the Mississippi, which 
is in the same latitude with the District of Maine, the upper part of New 
Hampshire, the State of Vermont and the commencement of the St. Law- 
rence, where it attains its greatest dimensions. In these countries I have 
seen it in very different situations, and it seems to accommodate itself to 
all varieties of soil, except such as consist wholly of sand and such as are 
almost constantly submerged. But I have seen the largest stocks in the 
bottom of soft, friable and fertile valleys, on the banks of rivers composed 
of deep, cool, black sand, and in swamps filled with the White Cedar and 
covered with a thick and constantly humid carpet of sphagnum. Near 
Norridgewock, on the river Kennebeck, in one of these swamps, which is 
accessible only in midsummer, I measured two trunks felled for canoes, of 
which one was 154 feet long and 54 inches in diameter, and the other 142 
feet long and 44 inches in diameter, at 3 feet from the ground.- Mention 
is made in Belknap’s History of New Hampshire, of a White Pine felled 
near the river Merrimack, 7 feet 8 inches in diameter, and near Hallowel 
I saw a stump exceeding 6 feet ; these enormous stocks had probably 
reached the greatest height attained by the species, which is about 180 
feet: I have been assured by persons worthy of belief, that in a few 
instances they had felled individual trees of nearly this stature. Hence 
we must conclude that the authors who have stated its height at 260 feet 
have been misled by incorrect reports. 
But this ancient and majestic inhabitant of the North American forests 
is still the loftiest and most valuable of their productions, and its summit 
is seen at an immense distance aspiring toward heaven, far above the heads 
of the surrounding trees. The trunk is simple for two-thirds pr three- 
fourths of its height, and the limbs are short and verticillate, or disposed 
in stages one above another to the top of the tree, which is formed by 
three or four upright branches, seemingly detached and unsupported. In 
