52 FIELD AND FOREST. 



From the above table it will be seen that in the eighteen specimens 

 where total length could be measured the height ranged from no to 

 i68 feet, the average being 143^, while their combined length would 

 amount to 2413 feet, or about half a mile. The average length of the 

 twenty-one trunks is about 72^ feet, (the extremes being 50,120,) 

 while their combined length is 1526 feet, or near a third of a mile of 

 straight timber, their girths, ranging from 12 to 37 feet, the average 

 of the twenty-five being 19I feet. Scarcely any of these measurements 

 represent the maximimi dimensions, especially those of the height, 

 which could not always be ascertained on account of the top 

 having been "trimmed up," or because the tree was standing. A 

 girdled, or "deadened" tree standing isolated in a large level 

 corn-field in the bottoms, was 182 feet high according to the method 

 of measurement — a careful triangulation. [This is example j of the 

 above table.] A prostrate one (example x) must have been still higher 

 when standing, for at 150 feet from the base the branches were from 

 I to i}^ feet in diameter, the remaining portion having been broken 

 and scattered by the fall of the tree, and afterwards collected for fire- 

 wood. The total length was thus estimated at near two hundred 

 feet. Several stumps are yet standing in the Wabash Valley which 

 measure from nine to twelve feet in diameter, but there are few trees 

 now standing which approach this size. Prof. E. T. Cox mentions 

 one, however, in Jackson County, Indiana, which he measured and 

 found to be 38 feet in circumference at two feet from the ground, 

 while the trunk rose with scarcely any perceptible diminution to the 

 height of 65 feet before the first limb was thrown out ; the total height 

 was estimated at 120 feet. 



According to Prof. Cox (in epist.) " it was not uncommon in olden 

 times to find in Posey County, Indiana, Poplar trees that would make 

 two gunwales one hundred feet in length and two-and-a-half feet wide 

 at the smaller end." That this statement may seem credible, it may 

 be added that at Timberville, Wabash County, Illinois, Dr. Schneck 

 measured a felled Poplar whose trunk had been divided into ten saw- 

 logs of 12 feet in length each. At the latter settlement formerly exis- 

 ted what was probably the finest growth of of this tree extant. 

 From inquiries of woodsmen it was ascertained that many of the trees 

 cut were "nigh onto two hundred feet long," while man) were so 



