“In both the Cuban and longleaf pine the locality where grown appears to have but little influence on weight or strength, and there is no reason to believe that the longleaf pine from one State is better than that from any other, since such variations as are claimed can be found on any 40-acre lot of timber in any State.  But with loblolly and still more with shortleaf this seems not to be the case.  Being widely distributed over many localities different in soil and climate, the growth of the shortleaf pine seems materially influenced by location.  The wood from the southern coast and gulf region and even Arkansas is generally heavier than the wood from localities farther north.  Very light and fine-grained wood is seldom met near the southern limit of the range, while it is almost the rule in Missouri, where forms resembling the Norway pine are by no means rare.  The loblolly, occupying both wet and dry soils, varies accordingly.”  Cir.  No. 12, p. 6.

" ...  It is clear that as all localities have their heavy and their light timber, so they all share in strong and weak, hard and soft material, and the difference in quality of material is evidently far more a matter of individual variation than of soil or climate.” Ibid., p.22

“A representative committee of the Carriage Builders’ Association had publicly declared that this important industry could not depend upon the supplies of southern timber, as the oak grown in the South lacked the necessary qualities demanded in carriage construction.  Without experiment this statement could be little better than a guess, and was doubly unwarranted, since it condemned an enormous amount of material, and one produced under a great variety of conditions and by at least a dozen species of trees, involving, therefore, a complexity of problems difficult enough for the careful investigator, and entirely beyond the few unsystematic observations of the members of a committee on a flying trip through one of the greatest timber regions of the world.

“A number of samples were at once collected (part of them supplied by the carriage builders’ committee), and the fallacy of the broad statement mentioned was fully demonstrated by a short series of tests and a more extensive study into structure and weight of these materials.  From these tests it appears that pieces of white oak from Arkansas excelled well-selected pieces from Connecticut, both in stiffness and endwise compression (the two most important forms of resistance).”  Report upon the forestry investigations of the U.S.D.A. 1877-1898, p. 331.  See also Rep. of Div. of For., 1890, p. 209.

“In some regions there are many small, stunted hickories, which most users will not touch.  They have narrow sap, are likely to be birdpecked, and show very slow growth.  Yet five of these trees from a steep, dry south slope in West Virginia had an average strength fully equal to that of the pignut from the better situation, and were superior in toughness, the work to maximum load being 36.8 as against 31.2 for pignut.  The trees had about twice as many rings per inch as others from better situations.