April 1902.] The Hardy Catalpa. 107 



boards sixteen feet long and eighteen inches wide, which had been cut from a log 

 having lain on the ground at least 100 years. This log was lying across a stream, 

 and had been used as a foot-bridge. The gentleman of whom I secured the 

 boards had himself known of the log in its position for sixty years, and his father 

 had reported it as being in that position forty years previous to the knowledge 

 of my informant. The sap wood had disappeared, and there was about an inch 

 of decayed wood on the outside. The center, however, was entirely sound and 

 still susceptible of taking a good polish. Some of these boards were shown at the 

 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. 



"While collecting for this exposition, I found logs which had been buried in 

 an embankment of some kind, and were then protruding from the earth, in a 

 grade made by the Illinois Central railroad. This was in 1875. The cut by the 

 railroad had been made sixteen or eighteen years before. How long the logs had 

 been under the earth cannot be told. I identified the wood, however, as catalpa. 

 They were too badly decayed to be used for exhibition purposes, but there was 

 still a good deal of sound wood in the logs. Some stockades in southern Illinois 

 made in part of catalpa trees show also the durable quality of this wood in con- 

 nection with moist earth. Some of these timbers are known to have remained 

 sound in earth for sixty years." 



It is reported by Mr. E. E. Barney, in a pamphlet entitled "Addi- 

 tional Facts and Information in Relation to the Catalpa Tree," etc. 

 (1879), page 5, that, according to old residents of Vincennes, Ind., 



"the old stockade built by the first French settlers of that place was largely 

 from catalpa trees, which grow native in the forests there, and that when re- 

 moved from the ground, nearly 100 years after they had been set, were perfectly 

 sound and gave no indications of decay." He further says (same page): "Large 

 catalpa trees back of New Madrid, on the Mississippi river, in southwestern 

 Missouri, killed by eruptions in 1811, I am informed, in a letter received August 

 10 from a gentlemen living there, are still standing, perfectly sound, after sixty 

 years, and, to use his expression, 'plenty of them.' One of these was recently cut 

 down, and seven feet of the butt and seven feet of the top sent to me. The top, 

 though worn to a point by the action of the wind and rain, is perfectly sound. 

 The butt, though showing on the outside the result of long exposure, is as sound 

 as it was sixty-nine years ago, when killed by the eruption." 



Regarding these particular trees, there are two additional accounts. 

 Mr. James M. Bucklin, 0. E., writing from Knighteville, Ind., July 

 15, 1876, to Mr. John Simpson, the superintendent of the Terre Haute 

 & Indianapolis railroad, quoted by Mr. Barney in a pamphlet pub- 

 lished in 1878, says : 



" In 1876 I found it (catalpa) in large bodies and in enormous height and size, 

 three and one-fourth feet in diameter and fifty feet high, without a limb, in de.nse 

 forests which extend south of Poplar Bluffs in southeastern Missouri, between 

 the Big Black and the St. Francis rivers. I was then exploring a route for the 

 Iron Mountain & Helena (Ark.) railroad. . . , Throughout that region the 

 peculiar value of the tree is well known, not only for its durability, but for other 

 properties invaluable to early settlers. Canoes are used exclusively on these riv- 

 ers, and, when made of catalpa trees, never crack in seasoning or rot. Henly, 

 the ferryman at Poplar Bluffs, had a canoe perfectly sound, three feet across the 



