SOME LABRADOR TREES 
some rifle bullets suggested interesting inci- 
dents, and an imbedded stone on the cliff side 
of the tree together with fractures of roots that 
had occurred in the year 1811 or 1812 suggested 
an earthquake. 
Nothing of this spectacular sort did I find in 
my study of Labrador trees, but I had deter- 
mined on this trip to make as many sections 
of the trees as I could, and I had brought a 
saw for the purpose, because in my previous 
visit to Labrador I had cut down and sectioned 
a few of the dwarf specimens with the best 
instrument I then had, a sheath knife, and 
found they were all tough and some of them 
were surprisingly old and interesting. Thus: 
‘A little larch that had successfully risen to 
the great height of nine inches in a gully, I 
found on sectioning and counting the rings 
with a pocket lens to be thirty-two years old. 
The massive trunk was three-eighths of an inch 
in diameter. A balsam fir with a spread of 
branches of twenty-seven inches, whose top- 
most twig was thirteen inches from the ground, 
showed fifty-four rings in a massive trunk two 
inches in diameter. Another balsam fir nine 
inches high and twenty-one inches in extent 
207 
