Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/353

Rh in abandoned fields, but toward its southern limits it prefers steep rocky bluffs.

This pine, like others with very short leaves, has a thin bark and is quite sensitive to fire, though a light ground fire does not necessarily injure mature trees. In young thickets fire sometimes sweeps through the tops of the trees and kills them outright, as in the boreal conifer forests first mentioned. Its local distribution seems to be governed largely by fire, as in the case of the red cedar, for the places where it grows are usually pretty well protected by their isolation, as in abandoned fields, by topography, as on bluffs, or by the sparseness of the undergrowth.

This tree does not often grow large enough to be useful for anything but fuel, charcoal and wood-pulp.

The Southern Short-leaf Pines.—Two species (Pinus echinata and P. Tæda), which although they are easily distinguished have much in common, are called short-leaf pine in the South. The latter is distinguished in the literature of botany and forestry as "loblolly pine," a name which does not seem to be used much by lumbermen and other "natives."

Pinus echinata ranges from Staten Island and southern Missouri to northern Florida and eastern Texas, ascending the mountains of

 (Pinus echinata) April, 1914.