GOOD-BYE TO THE WOODS 



217 



The three ages of the spruce 



dom. The individual history of each tree is in three 

 stages: 



First, as a low, thick, creeping bush sometimes ten 

 feet across, but only a foot high. In this stage it con- 

 tues until rooted enough and with capital enough to 

 send up a long central shoot; which is stage No. 2. 



This central shoot is 

 like a Noah's Ark pine ; 

 in time it becomes the 

 tree and finally the 

 basal thicket dies 

 away, leaving the spec- 

 imen in stage No. 3. 



A stem of one of the low creepers was cut for ex- 

 amination; it was 1J inches through and 25 years 

 old. Some of these low mats of spruce have stems 5 

 inches through. They must be fully 100 years old. 



A tall, dead, white spruce at the camp was 30 feet 

 high and 11 inches in diameter at 4 feet from the 

 ground. Its 190 rings were hard to count, they were 

 so thin. The central ones were thickest, there being 

 16 to the inmost inch of radius; on the outside to the 

 north 50 rings made only J an inch and 86 made one 

 inch. 



Numbers 42 and 43, counting from the outside, were 

 two or three times as thick as those outside of them 

 and much thicker than the next within; they must 

 have represented years of unusual summers. No. 99 

 also was of great size. What years these corresponded 

 with one could not guess, as the tree was a long time 

 dead. 



