Few trees in the world are used by more people or in more different ways than the long-leaf pine. For strength and durability combined its wood has no superior among the pines, and it ranks equally high as a fuel. The same tree is our chief source of "naval stores" (i. e., turpentine and rosin).[1] In the regions where it abounds the log cabin of the small farmer and the mansion of the wealthy lumberman or naval stores operator are mostly built (from sills to shingles), painted, fenced and heated with the products of this tree. It supplies cross-ties, bridges, depots, cars and freight to many railroads, and motive power to some.[2] The masts, decks, and cargo of many a schooner on the Atlantic Ocean are of this species, and some of the busiest streets of our large cities have been paved with blocks of its wood in the last few years. Turpentine and lampblack from it are found in every drug-store.
As this pine grows mostly in comparatively level ground and almost unmixed with other trees, it has been cut as ruthlessly and wastefully as the northern white pine, and most of the once magnificent forests of it are now scenes of desolation. Although some other pines are mixed with it in the census returns, it is probably safe to say that at the present time the annual cut of it exceeds that of any other North American tree. Of the 2,736,756,000 feet of "yellow pine" cut in Louisiana and 1,100,840.000 feet cut in Florida in 1909 probably at least 75 per cent, was of this species.
The future prospects for it seem brighter than those of the white pine, for, as already pointed out, it is not affected much by fire, the greatest scourge of some of the northern forests. The long-leaf pine's worst enemy at present is the farmer, who in the last two or three decades has been taking possession of the once despised sandy pine lands very rapidly.[3] Notwithstanding the comparative poverty of the soil, the ease with which it can be cultivated and the mild climate are
- ↑ The old method of extracting turpentine has been described in The Popular Science Monthly for April, 1887, and February, 1896; and the modern cup-and-gutter method by Dr. C. H. Herty, the inventor thereof, in Bulletin 40 of the IJ. S. Bureau of Forestry, 1903.
- ↑ A generation ago pine wood seems to have been the prevailing fuel for locomotives in the coastal plain, but most of the railroads have had to abandon it on account of its growing scarcity.
- ↑ The "wire-grass country" of Georgia, an area of about 10,000 square miles near the center of the range of this tree, increased in population about 60 per cent, between 1890 and 1900, and 35 per cent, between 1900 and 1910, which necessitated the creation of ten new counties in that part of the state since 1904. Somewhat similar developments have been taking place in the corresponding parts of Florida, Alabama and Mississippi at the same time.
cepted by writers on forestry, most of whom live in regions where the normal frequency of forest fires is much less. For more extended discussions of the problem see Bull. Torrey Bot. Club, 38: 515-525, 1911; Geol. Surv. Ala. Monog., 8: 25-27, 83, June, 1913; Literary Digest, 47: 208, August 9, 1913; American Forestry, 19: 667-669, October, 1913.
