THE OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES PINE 



You measure its trunk and find that it is 

 1 6 feet 4 inches in girth; you wonder at the 

 great depth of its shadow and find that the 

 spread of the branches is nearly 90 feet; 

 and you look upward to its topmost branch 

 and find, if you have a measuring instrument, 

 that it is 97 feet from the ground. 



There may be a larger white pine than 

 this somewhere in Massachusetts; but where 

 shall we look for it? In the few remaining 

 stands of virgin timber some trees remain 

 whose height reaches one hundred feet and 

 over, but these are lumber trees, having a 

 long, tapering bole, and only a wisp of needles 

 at the top. Such a tree was the gigantic 

 pine, 17 feet in circumference, that once 

 stood near the turnpike road between Read- 

 ing and Andover in Essex County, and which 

 was spared by the lumberman because it 

 was the largest tree on the lot. Even in 

 the practice of forestry the pine is protected 

 only for what it will yield in less than seventy- 

 five years as a timber crop, and pines of 

 large girth are now few and far between. 



The Pittsfield pine is still apparently sound 



