I 70 ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 



AGE OF TREES. 



MAN counts his life by years; the oak, by centuries. At one hundred years 

 of age the tree is but a sapling ; at five hundred it is mature and strong; 

 at six hundred the gigantic king of the greenwood begins to feel the touch of 

 time : but the decline is as slow as the growth was, and the sturdy old tree rears 

 its proud head and reckoned centuries of old age just as it reckoned centuries 

 of youth. 



It has been said that the patriarchs of the forest laugh at history. Is it not 

 true ? Perhaps, when the balmy zephyrs stir the trees, the leaves whisper 

 strange stories to one another. The oaks and the pines, and their brethren of 

 the wood, have seen so many suns rise and set, so many seasons come and go, 

 and so many generations pass into silence, that we may well wonder what the 

 " story of the trees " would be to us if they had tongues to tell it, or we ears fine 

 enough to understand. 



" The king of white-oak trees," says a letter-writer in this good year 1883, " has 

 been chopped down and taken to the saw-rnill. It was five hundred twenty- 

 five years old, and made six twelve-foot logs, the first one being six feet in 

 diameter and weighing seven tons." What a giant that Ohio oak tree must 

 have been, and what changes in this land of ours it must have witnessed ! It 

 looked upon the forest when the red man ruled there alone; it was more than 

 a century old when Columbus landed in the new world; and to that good age 

 it added nearly four centuries before the axe of the woodman laid it low. 



Yet, venerable as this "king of the white-oak trees " was, it was but an in- 

 fant, compared with other monarchs of the western solitudes. One California 

 pine, cut down about 1855, was, according to very good authority, eleven hundred 

 twenty years old ; and many of its neighbors in its native grove are no less 

 ancient than it was. Who shall presume, then, to fix the age of the hoary trees 

 that still rear their stalwart frames in the unexplored depths of the American 

 wilderness ? 



In England there are still in existence many trees that serve to link the far- 

 off past with the living present. Some of them were witnesses of the fierce 

 struggles between Norman and Saxon when William the Conqueror planted 

 his standard "the three-bannered lions of Normandy old " upon English 

 soil. Then there is the King's Oak, at Windsor, which, tradition informs us, 

 was a great favorite with William when that bold Norman first inclosed the 

 forest for a royal hunting-ground. 



The Conquerer loved to sit in the shade of the lofty, spreading tree and muse 

 upon what? Who knows what fancies filled his brain, what feelings stirred 

 his proud spirit, what memories, what regrets, thrilled his heart, as he sat there 

 in the solitude ? Over eight hundred years have rolled away since the Norman 

 usurper fought the sturdy Saxon, and, for conquerer as for conquered, life and 

 its ambitions and its pangs ended long ago ; but the mighty oak, whose green- 

 ness and beauty were a delight to the Conqueror, still stands in Windsor forest. 

 Eight centuries ago its royal master saw it a " goodly tree." How old is it 

 now ? 



