(fringing Bacft t$t §oxwt 



in diameter, and stood eighty-four feet high. 

 A study of its annual rings showed that at the 

 age of two hundred it was only eleven inches 

 in diameter, with a height of sixty-nine feet. 

 Evidently it had lived two centuries in an over- 

 crowded district. The soil and moisture con- 

 ditions were good, and apparently in its two 

 hundred and second year a forest fire brought 

 it advantages by sweeping away its crowding, 

 retarding competitors. Its annual ring two hun- 

 dred and two bore a big fire-scar, and after 

 this age it grew with a marked increase of 

 rapidity over the rate of previous years. A 

 mature lodge-pole of average size and age 

 measures about eighteen inches in diameter 

 and stands sixty feet high, with an age of be- 

 tween one hundred and twenty-five and one 

 hundred and seventy-five years. 



The clinging habit of the cones of the lodge- 

 pole pine in rare cases causes numbers of 

 them to be caught by the expanding tissues, 

 held, and finally overgrown and completely 

 buried up in the tree like a knot. Commonly 

 the first crop of cones is the one caught. These 



221 



