PRACTICAL ARBORICULTURE 61 



HISTORY WRITTEN IN A TREE TRUNK A WHITE ASH STORY. 



On New Year's Day, A. D. 1906, there was standing on a side track of 

 the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railway, a flat car which was laden 

 with ten white ash logs, a small remnant of the great forests for which Indiana 

 was once noted. 



The logs were knotty and badly decayed at the heart, except the one 

 which attracted my attention. 



A dozen years ago these logs would not have been looked at by any saw- 

 mill operator, but now "anything goes" mill men are glad to buy even such 

 culls as these. 



The larger log was thirty inches in diameter and had grown to this size 

 in 118 years, the seed having started into growth in the spring of 1787. Its 

 average annual diameter increase was slightly less than one-fourth inch. 



Had conditions been as favorable during its entire life as they were during 

 the middle period, this tree would have been five feet diameter, instead of 

 thirty inches. But we anticipate. 



The annual growth, as shown by the con'centric rings at the end of the log, 

 during the first thirty-two years of this tree's life was almost imperceptible, 

 the lines being but one-thirty-second part of an inch apart. Each year it had 

 added one-sixteenth inch to its diameter. 



Evidently its struggle for existence during this third of a century must 

 have been very severe, crowded among 2,722 other infantile ash and other 

 trees, each striving to secure its share of the quart of water which fell as rain 

 or snow on a square foot surface during an entire week of the growing season, 

 as that water contained in solution those elements of fertility necessary for 

 existence, of even a slow-going tree, it having gathered up this matter while 

 percolating through the few inches depth of soil which the roots, of this ash had 

 appropriated. For it is known that even the most voracious members of the 

 vegetable kingdom may partake of that food only which has been dissolved 

 by water. 



Resins, gums, varnish, rubber and even camphor may be the product of 

 the sap of various trees which supply these particular substances, and while 

 we are unable to redissolve these articles except with alcohol or other power- 

 ful solvents, yet the trees cannot exist if not supplied with water. 



It took this struggling ash a third of a century to reach a height of twen- 

 ty-five feet and a diameter of two inches. 



15 ut at this period of its existence, in the year of 1819, a large majority of 



