44 PRACTICAL FORESTRY 
ever, most trees may be perpetuated asexually by 
means of cuttings for a long period of time. A ban- 
yan may live on for centuries. The original trunk 
may die and disappear, but other trunks will take its 
place. In fact, constant wind blowing in one direc- 
tion may, in the course of centuries, cause a banyan- 
tree to move some distance from the place where the 
tree first started. There are chestnuts on the slopes 
of Mt. A{tna which bore fruit when Homer was a 
boy, and in Southern Mexico there is an old cypress 
which was probably twenty centuries old when Co- 
lumbus landed. Although a tree may live for ages, 
there is, from a forestry standpoint, a maturity to 
the forest. Careful measurements show that after 
a certain period in each species the average annual in- 
crement begins to decrease. When the amount of 
wood addition has reached its maximum the tree has 
reached its volume maturity. When the amount of 
wood which is added each year is no longer sufficient 
to pay interest on the capital invested, the tree has 
reached financial maturity. In the one instance every 
inch added to the diameter of a large tree, within 
certain limits of course, adds much to its value, be- 
“cause old large wood is usually most desirable, while 
at the same time the interest is now accumulating 
at a fierce rate on the amount invested. I said above, 
“within certain limits,” because the big trees of Cali- 
