MIDDLE AND EAST TENNESSEE. 7 



now left is of young growth, with low-branched crowns 

 and trunks small enough to escape doing duty as tele- 

 graph-poles, though somewhat in danger for small fence- 

 posts. Nearly all of these counties, too, have their small 

 bodies of prime old cedar, in most cases standing on lime- 

 stone, which have escaped the ax of the pencil-maker, 

 and especially the piling and telegraph-pole gentlemen. 

 It should be said, however, that all such miraculous 

 escapes are due to the fact that the timber could 

 not be bought for one or another reason. The local buy- 

 ers know every old tree for miles, and one told me he 

 was only waiting for an owner to die, whose heirs he 

 knew would sell as soon as they had the power. And so 

 I believe that, were it possible for buyers to lay hands 

 upon all the sizable cedar timber now, it would not last 

 over five years, if it did that long. 



The virgin red cedar of Middle Tennessee is often sev- 

 eral centuries old, and in some cases very large. Al- 

 though really large cedar is at present but rarely seen, 

 through the courtesy of several public-spirited manu- 

 facturers, I saw some fine, sound timber, the butt log 

 squaring in one case thirty-seven inches, with an esti- 

 mated age of two hundred and ninety years, and aver- 

 aging about three twelve-foot logs to the tree. But I no- 

 ticed that the owner of these logs was careful to lock the 

 door after we left the storehouse. 



While we should never expect to see the good farming- 

 lands of Middle Tennessee again clothed w T ith large cedar 

 and other timber, as in days gone by, the farmer for- 

 ester of to-day has little to do but keep out fire and 

 grazing stock from the rocky waste land on the farm to 

 see it bristle with young red cedars. They refuse to 

 grow only where there are no fissures in the exposed 

 rock, and elsewhere often form dense forest-covers under 

 conditions too dry and barren for any other tree. 



Although the general impression one receives in trav- 

 eling through Middle Tennessee is one in which red cedar 

 is the dominant feature, there are, nevertheless, many 

 characteristic broad-leafed trees; but the greater abun- 



