250 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



cently a pine was felled in Pennsylvania which 

 was 155 feet tall and 42 inches through at 4 feet 

 6 inches from the ground. This tree was 351 

 years old. I have reason to believe my patriarch 

 is as old as that one. His height is not so great, 

 but he has three trunks instead of one, springing 

 from that gnarled butt at a number of feet above 

 the ground. There are occasional trees like this 

 one still standing in eastern Massachusetts. 

 They have seen their children and grandchildren 

 grow to marketable size and fall before the wood- 

 chopper's axe. They have seen one or two gen- 

 erations of hardwood grow between these cut- 

 tings, yet they still are allowed to remain. In 

 cutting off wood it used to be the custom of our 

 forefathers to leave here and there a particularly 

 gnarled and difficult pine that the seed might fur- 

 nish a growth for succeeding generations. 

 Hence these occasional trees. I may be wrong, 

 but I have an idea that my patriarch was growing 

 right where he stands, a young and vigorous 

 sapling, when quaint old Josselyn wrote about 

 those two voyages to New England in the early 

 3''ears of the seventeenth century. 



Josselyn gives us to understand that the wood 

 of the white pine is that mentioned in the Scrio- 



