254 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



though fai-rly bare, show the knots where the 

 limbs have been and produce anything but clear 

 lumber. It may be that by giving these century- 

 old groves another century or two we should have 

 something like the old perfect boles that our 

 great grandfathers got out of the Maine woods, 

 but I am not sure about it. I see no promise of 

 it in the conditions under which pines grow to- 

 day. Even my patriarch, though he has, I am 

 very sure, sufficient years to his credit would cut 

 up into only a medium quality of box boards; 

 there is no clear lumber in him. 



To produce the wonder trees of the early half 

 of the nineteenth century the tiny seeds must 

 have rooted plentifully in rich soil, the trees must 

 have grown so close together as to steadily and 

 persistently crowd out the weaker and shorter, 

 and in the passing of two, three or four centuries 

 we had remaining the magnificent specimens, 

 towering two hundred or more feet in the air, 

 their trunks without limb or knot for more than 

 half that distance. Such conditions may account 

 for these enormous trees, yet I am inclined to 

 think that they do not. I am inclined to the be- 

 lief that in these giant pines we had a variety of 

 Pinus strobus which was very closely allied to 



