From all I could observe, and all the inquiries I could get answered, it appeared that this rapidly-growing tree does not attain its full growth until it is eighty or ninety years old, nor does its time of full health and vigour much exceed an hundred. Before this time it is liable to the attacks of insects, but these are of a kind that bore the tender spring shoots to deposit their eggs therein, and their larvæ appear to live principally on the sap, which is very abundant, so that the tree is but slightly injured. But after the pine has attained its acmé, it is attacked by an insect which deposits its egg in the body of the tree, and the larva devours its way through the solid substance of the timber; so that, after a pine has been for one or two seasons subjected to these depredators, it will be fairly riddled, and, if cut down, is unfit for any other purpose than burning. Indeed, if delayed too long, it is poorly fit for firewood, so thoroughly do these insects destroy its substance. At the same time that one set of insects is engaged in destroying the body, myriads of others are at work under the bark, destroying the sap vessels, and the foliage wears a more and more pale and sickly appearance as the tree declines in vigour. If not cut down, it eventually dies, becomes leafless, stripped of its bark, and, as the decay advances, all the smaller branches are broken off; and it stands with its naked trunk and a few ragged limbs, as if bidding defiance to the tempest which howls around its head. Under favourable circumstances, a large trunk will stand in this condition for nearly a century, so extensive and powerful are its roots, so firm and stubborn the original knitting of its giant frame. At length some storm, more furious than all its predecessors, wrenches those ponderous roots from the soil, and hurls the helpless carcass to the earth, crushing all before it in its fall. Without the aid of fire, or some peculiarity of situation favourable to rapid decomposition, full another hundred years will be requisite to reduce it to its elements, and obliterate the traces of its existence. Indeed, long after the lapse of more than that period, we find the heart of the pitch-pine still preserving its original form, and, from being thoroughly imbued with turpentine, become utterly indestructible except by fire.