A Forest Fire eit St. John WOO Years ago. 217 



bog. Bui further, it is impossible for the roots of such 

 trees to reach a magazine of mineral sustenance, such as 

 the ground affords, but as a recompense they spread out 

 their long slender roots to a surprising distance over the 

 surface of the bog in search of food. The juices of the 

 bog afford them little or. no lime and potash, the roots can 

 not pass through the water-soaked subsoil, and so they are 

 literally starved. Spruce trees (Abies nigra) that are no 

 better than little shrubs in such situations, will show by 

 the rings of growth that they are 30 or 40 years old. A 

 growth for the same number of years would have enabled 

 their brethren on the upland to reach the size of stalwart, 

 trees. 



Cedar trees {Thuja occiclentcdis) also have been dwarfed 

 in the same way, but not to the same extent, as some of 

 them have finally struggled up to considerable dimensions. 

 One such tree, the tenacity of whose roots had been weak- 

 ened by the drainage of the bog, due to the operations of 

 the park commissioners of llockwood Park, had fallen 

 across the canal they made. The overturning of the tree 

 showed just how far the roots descended into the bog, and 

 it was to a depth no greater than six -inches; the boll of 

 the tree had sunk deeper than this, owing to the weight 

 of its trunk, but the lowest layer of roots started out at 

 this level to radiate through the moss of the bog. At the 

 time the tree fell the lower tier of roots had perished 

 (probably many years before), and the life of the tree was 

 sustained by an upper tier of roots that spread out about 

 three inches from the surface of the bog. Many of the 

 roots of even this second tier had perished, for the tree 

 had long passed its prime. 



One of the park commissioners was kind enough to 

 have the tree sawed as near to the base as the heart wood 

 remained, and thus exposed the annual layers of growth. 

 On counting these layers it was found that the tree had 

 attained the age of four hundred years. Moss grew up 



