SOME LABRADOR TREES 
feet in height in nearly a century, for I counted 
ninety-seven rings. Conditions were favourable 
for the first fifty years, but during the last 
forty-seven only a very little additional growth 
in girth was attained. 
A black spruce at Esquimaux Island, grow- 
ing with a multitude of others in close compe- 
tition for sun and air, attained a height of ten 
feet and a diameter of trunk of two inches in 
fifty-six years. In its early youth, — its first 
forty years, —it reached a diameter of only 
five-eighths of an inch. Another black spruce 
on the same island, one that had to contend 
on the shore with the winds of the gulf, ex- 
tended over six feet of ground, but grew to 
a height of only thirty-two inches. Its trunk 
was sturdy, three and three-quarters of an inch 
in diameter, and it contained seventy-seven 
rings. I counted two large black spruce stumps 
at Mingan; the first was in a thicket close to the 
tree containing the pigeon hawks’ nest, and 
had been, if as tall as that tree, about forty-five 
feet high. There were 121 rings in a circumfer- 
ence of thirty-nine inches, eighteen inches from 
the ground; about half the growth took place 
in the first forty years, after this progress was 
215 
