AMERICAN FOREST-TREES. 3am 
woods by the axe of the lumberman has allowed the access of 
light and heat and air to trees of humbler worth and lower 
stature, which have survived their more towering brethren. 
These, consequently, have been able to expand their crowns 
and swell their stems to a degree not possible so long as they 
were overshadowed and stifled by the lordly oak and pine. 
While, therefore, the New England forester must search long 
before he finds a pine 
fit to be the mast 
Of some great ammiral, 
beeches and elms and birches, as sturdy as the mightiest of 
their progenitors, are still no rarity.* 
California fortunately still preserves her magnificent se- 
quoias, which rise to the height of three hundred feet, and 
* The forest-trees of the Northern States do not attain to extreme longevity 
in the dense woods.- Dr. Williams found that none of the huge pines, the age 
of which he ascertained, exceeded three hundred and fifty or four hundred 
years, though he quotes a friend who thought he had noticed trees consider- 
ably older. The oak lives longer than the pine, and the hemlock-spruce is 
perhaps equally long lived. A tree of this latter species, cut within my knowl- 
edge in a thick wood, counted four hundred and eighty-six, or, according to 
another observer, five hundred annual circles. 
Great luxuriance of animal and vegetable production is not commonly ac- 
companied by long duration of the individual. The oldest men are not found 
in the crowded city ; and in the tropics, where life is prolific and precocious, 
it is also short. The most ancient forest-trees of which we have accounts 
have not been those growing in thick woods, but isolated specimens, with no 
taller neighbor to intercept the light and heat and air, and no rival to share 
the nutriment afforded by the soil. 
The more rapid growth and greater dimensions of trees standing near the 
boundary of the forest, are matters of familiar observation. ‘‘ Long experi- 
ence has shown that trees growing on the confines of the wood may be cut at 
sixty years of age as advantageously as others of the same species, reared in 
the depth of the forest, at a hundred and twenty. We have often remarked, 
in our Alps, that the trunk of trees upon the border of a grove is most de- 
veloped or enlarged upon the outer or open side, where the branches extend 
themselves farthest, while the concentric circles of growth are most uniform 
in those entirely surrounded by other trees, or standing entirely alone.”—A. 
and G. VILLA, Wecessita dei Boschi, pp. 17, 13. 
