THE TALE OF THE RINGS, 431 



its share of sun and rain. Count reveals that these white pines 

 are also all of the same age, but unfortunately, only 126 years old. 

 The Norways had twelve years the start of them, and the delay was 

 fatal. 



How did it happen that these trees came in so thickly and all 

 the same year? Perhaps further study will help us to find out. So 

 we go to another cutting, over a mile from the first. Here we find 

 many trees, about the size of those we have left, and counting the 

 rings, we find them to be of the same age, 138 years. But here there 

 is something more. In a secluded nook stands a group of immense 

 white and Norway pine trees, perhaps a dozen. These prove to be 

 very old, but remarkably enough, also of even age, each stump show- 

 ing 315 rings. Where is the rest of this patriarchal forest? Close 

 about the few remaining may be seen the forms of many more, 

 stretched upon the ground and slowly decaying. These have evi- 

 dently been blown down, possibly after being killed by fire. Their 

 fate gives us the clue to the disappearance of the others. It is plain 

 that some time before 1763, a great disaster overtook the pine forest 

 in this place. Most of it was wiped out of existence, either by fire 

 or wind. But here and there a clump remains and from them in a 

 favorable seed year came the seed which started the new and thriving 

 crop of Norway pine. 



To find out if possible whether this conflagration or blow down 

 was more than local, we go to a cutting some ten miles from our 

 first, and here again the oldest and largest of the stand, which is all 

 rather small, prove to be 138 years old. Whatever the cause then 

 it must have operated over a large area, but this is not a thick stand 

 — in fact there the many gaps, and much of the timber is limby and 

 knotty, a sure sign that it has not been grown very close together, 

 and soon we find that many, in fact, most of the trees are but loi 

 years old, there being two distinct age classes. 



How did this come about? Let us look at the older trees. 

 Here upon one of them is a fire scar, made when the tree was 18 years 

 of age. Upon another we find a similar scar, made in the same 

 year. And on close examination we can hardly find one of the older 

 trees free from the marks of this fire. How plain it is, that this 

 fire, occurring just 120 years ago, or in the year 1781, when the 

 young forest was 18 years of age, killed nearly all the young pine 

 and gave the forest a blow from which in this place at least, it never 

 fully recovered. But it did the best it could, for the age of the 

 second class of trees, loi years, shows that the young survivors of 

 the fire grew rapidly until at the age of 38 years they were enabled 

 to produce a crop of seeds, or possibly the old trees from which the 



