THE TALE OF THE RINGS. 429 



THE TALE OF THE RINGS. 



HERMAN H. CHAPMAN, GRAND RAPIDS. 



How a forest records its history in its tree trunks is to be reveal- 

 ed when the trees are felled. 



Every tree has its life history securely locked up in its heart. 

 Each year of its growth a thin ring- of wood is formed next to the 

 bark and adjoining it a corresponding layer of bark. As the tree 

 swells and swells, the bark is forced outward and splits into wide 

 fissures. Much of it falls off altogether, but each ring of wood re- 

 mains a faithful record of the year in which it was formed. When 

 the ax or saw of the woodman ends the life of the tree and brings 

 its body crashing to the earth, this record is unrolled before us, and 

 by it we can determine almost every incident in the life and growth 

 of the tree. 



Trees, as well as human beings, have their periods of struggle 

 and hardship, their prosperous times, their terrible misfortunes and 

 hair-breadths escapes, their injuries and recovery, and their com- 

 plete submergence in a struggle in which the odds were too great for 

 their feeble strength to cope with. 



Here is a sturdy oak whose tale revealed is that of steady per- 

 severance in the face of difficulties — a slow, gradual growth, never 

 checked, never daunted, till the final goal is reached, and it stands 

 supreme, literally monarch of all it surveys. 



Here is a mighty spruce, which has a tale of perseverance, but 

 of a different sort. The oak conquers by force of character, by its 

 fighting qualities. The spruce succeeds by its ability to endure. It 

 is like the patient Jew, frugal, living on what would be starvation 

 to others, till when their day of strength is past, and sudden disaster 

 overtakes them, it enters into its inheritance and prospers amazingly. 



See the record of this spruce, fifty, sixty, seventy years, each 

 year represented by a ring so small that it takes great care to dis- 

 tinguish them at all, and the whole seventy do not occupy the space 

 of three inches at the heart of the tree. What a tale of hardship this 

 sets forth. Other trees have pre-empted the light on which the ex- 

 istence of the tree depends. The poor spruce must be content with 

 the twilight that filters through the branches of its enemies, the 

 poplar, birch and pine. But it is content. It knows that the young 

 poplars or pines spring up beside it in the shade, but they can not 

 endure, but will quickly die. It knows that the time will come when 

 old age or disease will weaken the poplars, or perhaps a heavy wind 

 will lay them low, and the spruce, old in years, but insignificant in 

 stature, will escape injury, and still young in vitality will soon spring 



