RED CEDAR LORE 275 



four and a half feet from the ground, and with- 

 out limbs for two-thirds their height. These 

 were, of course, trees of the virgin forests, long 

 since removed that we and all the world might 

 have lead-pencils. The world has tried many 

 things for pencils, and some of them have had a 

 fugitive popularity, but still the millions of pen- 

 cils daily used are made from the diminishing 

 supply of red cedar. 



To us in New England to whom a cedar tree 

 thirty feet high is no common sight the stories of 

 these hundred-foot high trees seem strange in- 

 deed, and I know of but one red cedar whose 

 diameter is as much as twelve inches. This tree 

 is much less than thirty feet in height, however. 

 It grows by itself on rocky ground in a pasture 

 where it has no close neighbors of any variety. 

 Its trunk divides at eight feet from the ground 

 into many branches which make a round head 

 whose ancient twigs are hoary with lichens and 

 seem to be in the last stages of senile debility. 

 Yet every year the old tree puts forth a crop of 

 new leaves and defies the decay of centuries. 

 How many years old this tree is I cannot say, 

 but I think it very many. We readily tell the age 



