THE SINGING PINES 6i 



brambles unnoticed, then suddenly they take 

 heart and grow and we find a lusty forest com- 

 ing along. At three years they will not be over 

 ten inches high, but they will make ten inches in 

 height the next year, and after the fifth they 

 stride forward like lusty youths, glorifying in 

 their increase. It is not uncommon for them to 

 stretch up three feet a year, more than doubling 

 their height in that sixth year in which they 

 strike their stride. They do not cease this up- 

 ward striving as long as they live. 



After the age of sixty or so the pine may be 

 said to have passed the heyday of its youth, no 

 longer increasing so rapidly in height and girth, 

 yet the increase goes on, if more sedately. The 

 tree rarely reaches a height of more than i6o 

 feet and -a diameter of more than forty inches. 

 The largest ever measured by the Forestry De- 

 partment of the United States was forty-eight 

 inches in diameter at breast high and 170 feet 

 in height, containing 738 cubic feet of wood in its 

 mighty trunk. It will be some time before seed- 

 lings in the bramble patch here in Massachusetts 

 reach that size, however, for this tree was 460 

 years old. It grew among trees of similar age 

 in a pine forest in Michigan. 



