Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/352

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
348
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

apart as Brooklyn, N. Y., and Mobile, Ala., get part of their water supply from streams in which Chamæcyparis grows; and the water of Dismal Swamp—one of the best-known localities for this species—used to be preferred for drinking purposes on ships sailing from Norfolk on long voyages. Tire manufacture of paper is an industry which seems to require good water in large quantities, and the only paper mills in the coastal plain known to the writer (viz., at Hartsville, S. C, and Moss Point, Miss.) have juniper growing in their immediate vicinity.

The relations of this species to fire have been little studied, but what evidence there is seems to indicate that they are much the same as in the case of the boreal forests already described.

The wood is very durable, and therefore used largely for poles, shingles, woodenware, etc., but it is not separated from that of arbor-vitæ and red cedar in the latest census returns.

The Scrub Pine (Pinus Virginiana), also known as Jersey pine, spruce pine, nigger pine, cliff pine, etc., bears considerable resemblance

Pinus Virginiana on Rocky Bluffs along Warrior River, Tuscaloosa Co., Alabama. March, 1911.

to the jack pine previously mentioned, but does not grow within 200 miles of it. It ranges from just south of the terminal moraine in New York and Indiana to central Alabama, nearly always forming dense groves or thickets with little admixture of other trees. It is common in the coastal plain of Virginia north of the James River, but farther south seems to be confined to the highlands. In Alabama its distribution is approximately coextensive with the coal region, where it is a familiar feature of the landscape. It grows in rather dry, poor, often rocky soil, but not quite the poorest. In Maryland and Virginia it is very common