26o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Abbe, of the Signal-Office, at his request ; although that, when for- 

 warded, showed the rings much less conspicuously than when fresh 

 and green. 



Mr. P. C. Smith, in the August (1883) "Monthly," supporting the 

 commonly received reliability of the rings, as an index to the age of 

 the tree, refers to certain disputed corners and lines marked by hacks 

 on trees, and the agreement of the number of the subsequent rings 

 with the record of the surveyor. This indicates an uncertainty in the 

 matter which is hardly receivable as scientific proof. If the record was 

 reliable, why question the hack ? If only for confirmatory evidence, 

 how identify the one hack among the many which on old lines invari- 

 ably accumulate in the vicinity of disputed lines by many resurveys ? 

 Is it not a mere assumption that the rings do indicate a like num- 

 ber of years ; and that, as the record agreed with these rings, there- 

 fore, that hack was the one f Mr. Smith says, " It will be very dif- 

 ficult to convince an old surveyor, or an old lawyer, who has tried 

 many of these land cases, that each concentric ring on an oak-tree, at 

 least, does not indicate a year's growth only of such tree." Well, I 

 am an old surveyor, having followed the business more or less for up- 

 ward of fifty years, and the evidence before me admits of but the one 

 possible conclusion ; and, had Mr. Smith or any other intelligent man 

 the same evidence, I am sure there could be no disagreement between 

 us on the subject. 



The Hon. James J. Wilson, of Bethel, Vermont, an " old lawyer " 

 and late Senator in the State Legislature, writes me, under date of 

 August 15th, that at a trial in the District Court at Woodstock, Ver- 

 mont, on a disputed line based upon a cut on a hemlock-tree, a sec- 

 tion of the tree embracing the cut was produced in court, and the 

 rings outside the cut counted up from forty to fifty, while those on 

 the opposite side were only nine or ten ! The verdict of the court was, 

 that " the rings were not a sure indication of the age of the tree." 



Hon. Robert W. Furness, late Governor of Nebraska, so well 

 known as a practical forester, has kindly furnished me with several 

 sections of trees of known age, from which I select the following : A 

 pig-hickory eleven years old, with sixteen distinct rings ; a green-ash 

 eight years old, with eleven very plain rings ; a Kentucky coffee-tree 

 ten years old, with fourteen very distinct rings, and, in addition to 

 these, twenty-one sub-rings ; a burr-oak ten years old, with twenty- 

 four equally distinct rings ; a black-walnut five years old, with twelve 

 rings. Governor Furness adds that he has a chestnut of four years, 

 with seven rings ; a peach of eight years, with six rings ; and a chest- 

 nut-oak of twenty-four years, with eighteen rings. He attended the 

 recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, at Minneapolis, Minnesota, and presented this question and 

 his specimens to the section on forestry. He reports that Professor 

 Budd, of the Iowa Agricultural College, presented also a specimen 



