RECORD FOR RAPID GROWTH 



737 





Such books may be strictly scientific, as the last edition 

 of Gray, to which reference has already been made ; 

 or they may be partly scientific and partly popular, and 

 we will find a number of these in our libraries. 



In purchasing books of this latter class, one should 

 be certain that the author has not sacrificed accuracy to 

 insure a popular handling of the subject; for it is better 

 to have a limited knowledge of a thing so long as it is 

 accurate, than to store one's mind with a great mass of 

 undigested, unclassified, and unreliable stuff, which can 

 be of no use to its possessor, and only reflect discredit 

 upon one, when one chances to use it in the presence of 

 those who command a better knowledge of the subject, 

 founded on fact and bearing the trade-mark of truth. 

 Patient study in the field and in the work-room, with the 

 aid of the last editions of authoritative text-books, will 

 insure this knowledge, and the student will have the satis- 

 faction of knowing that progress is being made along 

 substantial lines of inquiry and research. 



Great confusion often follows on the use of terms 

 and on the real meaning of those terms. This danger is 

 well seen in the naming of colors; in the description of 

 forms or shapes ; in the estimation of proportions, and 

 in determining lengths and heights. Of recent years, 

 great progress has been made in the matter of having 

 a uniform system for the naming of colors in science, 

 be the department what it may. This has chiefly been 



RECORD FOR RAPID GROWTH 



By D. T. Mason 



Professor of Forestry, University of California 



WHILE the senior class of the Division of Forestry 

 of the University of California was doing field 

 work in the famous Del Monte Forest during 

 the past summer, a very rapid growing Monterey pine 

 (Pinus radiata) was discovered. This pine is the most 

 rapid growing conifer which the writer has seen. The 

 tree had been killed by insects presumably and cut for 

 cordwood. A section about ten feet above the ground 

 showed the following diameters the inside bark attained 

 at the end of various ten-year periods : 



10 years 15.0 inches 



20 years 34.1 inches 



30 years 46.5 inches 



40 years 51.2 inches 



46 years, total age 52.4 inches 



In addition, the bark would add approximately three 

 inches to the diameter of the tree at this point. The tree 

 at breast height was about 58 inches in diameter. Its 

 height was about 100 feet. It contained approximately 750 

 cubic feet of wood and bark, or about 8 J /3 cords of wood. 



As shown in the illustration the rings are very wide ; 

 during the period of most rapid growth some of them are 

 over 1.5 inches in width ; thus in some years the tree grew 

 more than three inches in diameter. The Monterey pine 

 is a short-lived, rapid-growing species which occurs in 



brought about through the work published by Prof. 

 Robert Ridgway, curator of the Division of Birds, of the 

 U. S. National Museum. Professor Ridgway gave Kis 

 untiring attention to this subject for many years, finally 

 publishing his admirable treatise on the " Nomenclature 

 of Colors," in which we find plate after plate of schemes 

 consisting of little parallelograms of color-tints, with 

 names for every possible shade occurring in nature. 

 Although this was primarily compiled for ornithologists, 

 the world did not allow it to rest there very long; the 

 book is used all the way from a silk factory to descrip- 

 tive literature in every line of human activity, where the 

 uniform naming of colors becomes necessary. Such a 

 work is particularly useful in botany, where color means 

 so much, and is referred to so often. For example, were 

 I to describe a flower as being simply yellow, what kind 

 of impression would I convey, when we have some thirty 

 or forty different shades of yellow? Yellows, as in the 

 case of any other color, run all the way from white 

 to black, with the faintest possible shade of yellow at 

 either end of the sequence. But if we aim to name the 

 exact shade of yellow meant, all we have to do is to take 

 the part of the flower, be it petal or autumn leaf, and 

 match it with the yellows of the manual above referred 

 to; then use the name of the discovered shade or tint 

 for the shade of the actual flower or leaf in our spoken 

 and written descriptions. 



A QUICK GROWER 



This tree gained a diameter of nearly four and a half feet in the forty-six 



years of its life. In some years the growth was as much as three inches. 



forests only within four or five miles of the ocean on and 

 in the vicinity of the Monterey peninsula, about 125 miles 

 south of San Francisco. The soil on which this particular 

 tree grew is deep sand. While the rainfall averages only 

 about 18 inches annually, the large amount of atmospheric 

 moisture, mainly in the form of fog, together with a very 

 long mild growing season, encourages rapid tree growth. 



