Pine

the leading genus of coniferous trees. There are over seventy different pines, all native to the northern hemisphere, chiefly in the temperate zone. Some forty species are found in North America. Our most important species is the white pine, found from Newfoundland to Minnesota and south along the mountains to Georgia. Maine is known as the Pine Tree State. The white pine cut of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota in the nineteenth century exceeded 286,000,000,000 feet. The corresponding pine of the South is the long leaved, yellow, or Georgia pine, found from Virginia to Texas. These two are the favorite pines of the lumberman. Two of the most worthless pines are the Bank's or jackpine of the North and its southern mate, the Jersey or scrub pine. The Norway or red pine of the North is not neglected by the lumbermen, but it has a resinous wood subject to decay. The nut pine and bull pine are natives of the West. The Austrian pine and the Scotch pine are planted frequently in American dooryards and along the windy side of orchards. The peculiar taste of pine needles is due to the presence of formic acid. The pine stands well in literature and ranks near the oak among noble forest trees. Milton likens the spear of Satan to a tall pine cut on Norwegian hills. In Scott's Lady of the Lake, Roderick Dhu's comrades call him "the evergreen pine." "The pine is the tree of silence," says Burroughs. "The pine wood loves a clean floor," says Bradford Torrey. See Conifer; Tar; Kauri; Lumber

Since 1895, 248 firms, representing an aggregate annual output of pine lumber of 4,500,000,000 feet have retired from business due to exhaustion of their timber supply. Plants representing approximately 500,000,000 feet capacity, which sawed in 1906, will not be operated in 1907.

The whole great business of turning white pine trees into lumber reached its climax in 1890 and has ever since been dwindling, until today it is not half what it once was. At one time there were a hundred saw mills on the Mississippi river between Minneapolis and St. Louis, and the great river was alive with the rafts of logs that floated down in a perpetual procession to feed the humming saws that never stopped. Today there are not more than two or three mills in that whole distance, and they will soon close forever. Once there were 120 steamboats employed in towing logs; today there are only five or six.--J. E. Rhodes, Secretary of the Northern Pine Manufacturers' Association.