84 THE HUMAN SIDE OF TREES 



North, there are a number of rings for each year. 

 Even in the cold countries a season of drought or 

 some other climatic disturbance may produce sub- 

 rings so prominent as to obscure the annual ones. 

 Nevertheless, they are always there and can be 

 made to tell a tree's age within a very few years. 

 Even female trees have not yet found it necessary 

 to resort to cosmetics and face preparations, as 

 some human beings have done, to conceal their cor- 

 rect ages. A tree does not mind the world knowing 

 that it is three thousand years old. 



It is unfortunate that in a great many very old 

 trees the earliest pages of our diary have not only 

 become yellow with age but crumbled away entirely. 

 Thus when in 1812 an ancient oak was cut down 

 at Bordza, Samogitia (Russian Poland) , there were 

 counted 710 rings toward the centre on a transverse 

 section and then the record became entirely illegi- 

 ble. The missing portion was estimated to cover 

 about 300 years. The age of living trees may be 

 estimated by making a lateral incision somewhere 

 in the trunk, counting the number of rings per inch, 

 and, comparing these figures with the diameter, 

 thus computing the total number of annual growths. 



This diary of concentric rings tells much more 

 than the mere age of a tree. Every important 

 change of weather, every minor incident in the 



