VI 



TREES THAT KEEP A DIARY 



"Tongues in trees, sermons in stones, 

 Books in running brooks, and good in everything." 



T I iREES not only keep a diary but give the 

 1 greater part of their lives to building the 

 house in which it is stored. After all, what is a 

 tree but a vast record of achievement where every 

 incident and vicissitude of its life is set down with 

 infinite precision? We ordinarily think of a tree 

 as a homogeneous living unit, yet science tells us 

 that only the leaves and a narrow sheath of the wood 

 composing the trunk and roots are actually alive. 

 The rest of its great bulk is made up of layer upon 

 layer of the dead and solidified bodies of innumer- 

 able cell generations which form a permanent and 

 most interesting record of the tree's history. Not 

 only the annual ring growth but the bark, the 

 branches, the leaves and the roots all bear accurate 

 witness to the passage of time and make up one 

 of the most complete autobiographies possible. 



All of us have learned to read some of the large 

 outstanding facts which every tree bears on its 



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