430 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



ahead in the race. Now see its rings — it has made as much growth 

 in ten years as in the preceding seventy and soon becomes a large 

 tree. 



What does the stump of this old white pine teach us ? Evident- 

 ly something extraordinary has happened to it, for way in near the 

 heart a black scar runs around the edge of one of the annual rings, 

 for nearly one-fourth of its circumference, and outside of this the 

 rings are no longer complete but have their edges turned in against 

 the face of this scar. Each subsequent ring reaches further across 

 it. By the time they have met in the center many years have elapsed 

 and there is a deep fissure where the scar once existd. But the later 

 rings have bridged the gap and, growing thicker in the depression 

 soon fill up the circumference of the tree to its natural roundness, 

 leaving no sign of the old wound. What happened to the tree? 

 While it was still young, its mortal enemy, the forest fire, swept 

 through the woods, destroying most of its companions and burning 

 a large strip of the tender bark on its exposed side, so that the bark 

 died and fell ofif. But being better protected than the others and 

 having still three-fourths of its bark left uninjured, it soon re- 

 covered, and its stump reveals how successfully it strove to heal the 

 wound and grow to maturity, to perpetuate its species. 



But as it takes many swallows to make the summer so it takes 

 many trees to make a forest — and the forest has almost as much in- 

 dividuality as the tree itself. Though each tree and each species 

 struggle with each other for life and supremacy, yet, in a sense, 

 they are helpful to each other and protect each other from their com- 

 mon enemies of the forest, the wind and the fire. Other enemies 

 there are, such as insects and disease,and sometimes the forest suffers 

 so severely that its whole aspect is changed, and new species come 

 in and replace the old. Much of this history the rings will reveal to 

 us, as is the case in some of the following actual examples from 

 studies recently made in the pine forests of northern Minnesota. 



In one locality where rather small Norway pine stood very close 

 together, making a thick stand, it was found that almost without ex- 

 ception the trees were of the same age — 138 years. No matter how 

 large or how tender the tree it was just as old as its neighbor. The 

 rings on all these trees were very large at the heart, but as fifty or 

 sixty years went by, they got narrower and narrower, until some of 

 the smaller trees seemed hardly to grow at all. The reason was 

 plain — there were too many trees — and as none would give up the 

 struggle, all suffered alike. 



But they were not the only sufferers. Here and there we see 

 a slender, struggling white pine, making a vain attempt to capture 



