HOW OLD WAS IT? 



659 



the economic status of the entire 

 community. Foresters have reaHzed 

 this for two decades and have borne 



the heat and odium of the fight for 

 better civihzation. How long must 

 they continue to fight alone? 



HOW OLD WAS IT? 



MR. Paul R. Strain of Worth- 

 more Farm near Wellsburg, 

 West Virginia, writes Ameri- 

 can Forestry that in blasting 

 on the farm of E. C. Carter near his place, 

 an ax mark was observed on the heart 

 of a quarter section of an oak stump 

 thrown out by the explosives. The 

 stump had been cut long enough to be 

 quite dead and was about 26 inches in 

 diameter where cut off. The ax marks 

 uncovered by the splitting of the stump 

 from the blasting out had been over- 

 grown with fully 8 inches of new wood. 

 The young tree when chopped into 

 must have been about 8 inches in 

 diameter. An opposite section of the 

 sttmip shows a sloping cut of good size 

 but no ax marks are visible. 



"The forest in which the stump was," 

 writes Mr. Strain, "had been cleared 

 less than ten years ago but the stump 

 gave me the impression of having been 

 dead much longer, and all through it's 

 interior it is what we call around here, 

 'badly doted.' Nevertheless, I under- 

 estimated the soundness of it when I 

 loaded only four sticks of dymanite 



under it, the explosion leaving the 

 shattered quarters in the ground and 

 thus making possible the discovery of 

 the ax marks. 



"One very impressive thing is evi- 

 dence of the very thin edge of the 

 cutting tool which made the mark. 

 Few axes nowadays are ground so 

 thin as it must have been. 



"There were few if any settlers in 

 this part of Virginia in 1780, which is 

 about the time of my great-grand- 

 father taking up land here, so it is 

 interesting to conjecture just when and 

 by whom the marks were made. I do 

 not believe it is possible to count the 

 annual ring growth until the wood is 

 dressed down smoother than the blast 

 left it. 



"Evan Hindman, who has cut a good 

 deal of timber in this section of Brooke 

 County, West Virginia, stated on view- 

 ing this specimen, that he had seen 

 similar old ax marks on trees he had 

 felled, even more deeply overgrown 

 with new wood than this one, but he did 

 not state what varieties of trees they 

 were." 



To Each Member: 



We wish to double the membership of the Association. Will you help? 

 Will you get one friend to join? The additional revenue will enable us to 

 do important work for forestry. (See Editorial on page 670.) 



You should be proud to recommend the Association and American 

 Forestry to your friends. Get a new member NOW. We must increase 

 our membership and we need your help. 



Application blank opposite page 607. 



American Forestry Association. 



