TALKS ON TREES 147 



of a slice of apple pie in a large and not opulent 

 family. Length, about eighteen inches. 



I have studied the growth of this tree by its rings, 

 and it is curious. Three hundred and forty-two 

 rings. Started, therefore, about 1510. The thick- 

 ness of the rings tells of the rate at which it grew. 

 For five or six years the rate was slow, then rapid 

 for twenty years. A little before the year 1550 it 

 began to grow very slowly, and so continued for 

 about seventy years. In 1620 it took a new start 

 and grew fast until 1714, then for the most part 

 slowly until 1786, when it started again and grew 

 pretty well and uniformly until within the last 

 dozen years, when it seems to have got on sluggishly. 



Look here. Here are some human lives laid down 

 against the periods of its growth, to which they 

 corresponded. This is Shakespeare's. The tree was 

 seven inches in diameter when he was born; ten 

 inches when he died. A little less than ten inches 

 when Milton was born; seventeen when he died. 

 Then comes a long interval, and this thread marks 

 out Johnson's life, during which the tree increased 

 from twenty-two to twenty-nine inches in diameter. 

 Here is the span of Napoleon's career; the tree 

 doesn't seem to have minded it. 



I never saw the man yet who was not startled at 

 looking on this section. I have seen many wooden 

 preachers never one like this. How much more 

 striking would be the calendar counted on the 



