In a Sea-side Forest. 183 



significant growths in the undrained swamps and 

 plough-defying meadows date back to Penn's 

 treaty, and even earlier. There is a familiar lilac 

 hedge, or part of it, within the bounds of my 

 ordinary rambles, planted by my grandfather in 

 1804, and so, in a dozen years, will be a hundred 

 years old; but it looks nothing different from 

 similar hedges planted fifty years ago. The old 

 cedar in the lane was but eighteen inches in 

 diameter, and I have documentary evidence that it 

 was a familiar landmark much more than a cen- 

 tury ago. A thunderbolt or tornado recently 

 shivered the old tree beyond recognition, literally 

 reduced it to splinters, and I found that the heart 

 was very much decayed. There was no possibility 

 of determining the age by counting the rings of 

 growth shown in a cross section, and so I have but 

 the poor satisfaction of merely conjecturing. At 

 one place a narrow bit of the outer edge was 

 smooth, and I counted forty-eight rings, one for 

 each year of my life, and these had added but 

 little to the tree's girth. 



But here, at Wildwood Beach, is a cedar almost 

 twelve feet in circumference, considerably more 



