THE LEAF AS A BUILDER. 17 



first but eight feet high, grew to measure fully thirty 

 feet, and expanded over a space three times as great 

 as that it originally occupied.' An elm, now probably 

 thirty years old, in the same length of time added 

 fifteen feet to its stature, and spread ten feet in the 

 radius of a circle. This tree is before me as I write. 

 Another, which stood four feet high in 1870, and 

 twenty feet in 1885, now reaches over thirty -five feet 

 above the point it started from. A white pine, which 

 ten years ago had a stem as thick as a portiere pole, 

 and a height only a trifle superior to my own, I can 

 now walk under without stooping ; its trunk meas- 

 ures twenty-three inches in circumference, and its 

 topmost bough is twenty feet above the ground. 

 Four firs, which ten years ago measured twelve feet, 

 now stand over twenty feet high. A silver maple, 

 which I planted when it was but four inches high, in 

 ten years grew nearly twenty feet. Two sugar ma- 

 ples, which looked like bean poles when they were set 

 out in 1875, are now symmetrically egg-shaped, and 

 reach far above the ridgepole of the neighboring 

 house ; in ten years' time I estimate that these trees 

 expanded six feet in all directions, and their trunks 

 nearly doubled their diameter. 



The imperceptible and irresistible force with 

 which a tree grows I have found curiously demon- 

 strated in a certain butternut, around which was built 



