Mankind, pretty generally, are disposed to place the Oak at the head of the vegetable kingdom, and it is crowned monarch of the forest.
I was reared among the noble Pines of Maine, nestled in my cradle beneath their giant forms, and often has the sighing wind made music that has calmed me to repose as it gently played through their tasseled boughs. Often have I been filled with awe as I gazed upon their massive trunks and raised my eye to their cloud-swept tops.
When a child, even, I could never read the following eulogy on the Oak without a fit of jealousy:
"The Oak for grandeur, strength, and noble size
Excels all trees which in the forest grow."
Of the truth of this sentiment I could never feel persuaded; in fact, in only one particular is this true. In strength the Oak excels, but in towering grandeur and massive diameter the Pine far exceeds the Oak, and indeed all other North American trees. Properly there are but three species of the Pine. 1. The White Pine. 2. Pitch Pine. 3. The Norway, or Red Pine, as it is sometimes called.[ [5] The Red Pine is remarkable for its tall trunk; it sometimes rises eighty feet before it puts out a limb. I recollect cutting one on the Mattawamkeag River, which disembogues into the Penobscot, eighty-two feet before reaching a limb. They are sometimes found one hundred feet in height and four feet in diameter.
The Pitch Pine is inferior to the red in size. The largest measurements I have ever seen give to one a diameter of two and a half feet, and ninety feet height; to another a girth of seven feet at the ground, and eighty feet height. This Pine is chiefly valued for the excellence of its fuel; and for generating steam in working engines it is preferable to any other wood.[ [6] Formerly, in some parts of the country, it was found much larger than it now is. "Men are living in Massachusetts and Maine who remember that it was not uncommon to find them of more than a hundred feet in height and four or five feet in diameter."
At present the White Pine is altogether the most important of the species. In New England, particularly in the northern part, it is often found to measure one hundred and fifty feet in height.
It is said that not many years since pines were found in the eastern part of New York which measured two hundred and forty feet in height. "Lambert's Pine, on the Northwest Coast, is found growing to the height of two hundred and thirty feet, and Douglas's Pine, in the same region, the loftiest tree known, has been said to exceed three hundred feet." The traveler quoted above describes one of the following dimensions: "One specimen, which had been blown down by the wind—and this was certainly not the largest which I saw—was of the following dimensions: its entire length was two hundred and fifteen feet; its circumference, three feet from the ground, was fifty-seven feet nine inches (nineteen feet three inches in diameter); and at one hundred and thirty-four feet from the ground it was seventeen feet five inches" in circumference, or about six feet in diameter.[ [7]
In Doctor Dwight's Travels we have an account of a tree in Lancaster, New Hampshire, which measured two hundred and sixty-four feet in length. "Fifty years ago, several trees growing on rather dry land in Blandford, measured, after they were felled, more than thirteen rods and a half, or two hundred and twenty-three feet in length."