SOME LABRADOR TREES 



feet in height in nearly a century, for I counted 

 ninety-seven rings. Conditions were favourable 

 for the first fifty years, but during the last 

 forty-seven only a very little additional growth 

 in girth was attained. 



A black spruce at Esquimaux Island, grow- 

 ing with a multitude of others in close compe- 

 tition for sun and air, attained a height of ten 

 feet and a diameter of trunk of two inches in 

 fifty-six years. In its early youth, its first 

 forty years, it reached a diameter of only 

 five-eighths of an inch. Another black spruce 

 on the same island, one that had to contend 

 on the shore with the winds of the gulf, ex- 

 tended over six feet of ground, but grew to 

 a height of only thirty- two inches. Its trunk 

 was sturdy, three and three-quarters of an inch 

 in diameter, and it contained seventy-seven 

 rings. I counted two large black spruce stumps 

 at Mingan ; the first was in a thicket close to the 

 tree containing the pigeon hawks' nest, and 

 had been, if as tall as that tree, about forty-five 

 feet high. There were 121 rings in a circumfer- 

 ence of thirty-nine inches, eighteen inches from 

 the ground; about half the growth took place 

 in the first forty years, after this progress was 

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