244 



THE GROWING TREE. 



A. — Rate of Growth. 



Following are some references to the scanty Australian literature on the 

 subject : — 



'■ Age of Australian (Tasmanian) Trees." J. E. Tenison-Woods, in Journ. Roy. 

 Soc. N.S.W., xii, 21 (1878). 



" Rate of Growth of Trees " (" The Eucalypts of Gippsland "), Howitt, in Trans. 

 Roy. Soc. Vict., ii, 111 (1890). 



" Notes on the Rate of Growth of some Australian Trees." H. C. Russell, in 

 Journ. Roy. Soc. N.S.W., xxv, 168 (1891). The observations were taken at Lake George, 

 and at the Sydney Observatory. 



' Rate of Growth of Native and Other Trees." In the Presidential Address of 

 Henry Deane, Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W., xx, 633-636 (1895), will be found some valuable 

 information on the subject. 



See also a paper, " Rate of growth of Indigenous Forest-trees," compiled by 

 me from the reports of Foresters, in the Agric. Gaz. N.S.W., August, 1893, which contains 

 much useful information, some of which I have abstracted below. 



Bull., No. 8, Department of Forestry, New South Wales (April, 1914), is a leaflet 

 entitled " Rate of Growth of Indigenous Commercial Trees," but they are taken in 

 groups, " Coastal Hardwoods " and " Inland Hardwoods," and the species are referred 

 to only by vernaculars. 



Reference may also be made to the article in my " Forest Flora of New South 

 Wales," Part 68, which gives some data in regard to the growth of various species in 

 non-Australian countries. 



In giving numbers of years of growth of a tree, much depends on the dates in 

 order that we may ascertain the meteorological conditions. As a rule authors omit 

 the dates, and hence we are dealing with indefinite growing entities, which we cannot 

 check. For example, the rate of growth of a tree between the years 1890 and 1900 may 

 be very different to the growth between the years 1895 and 1905, or 1900 and 1910. 



With reference to the following brief papers of Rev. J. E. Tenison- Woods and 

 Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Howitt, admirable observers, which tend to show that large trees 

 have probably not the great ages attributed to them by bush people and others, it 

 is interesting to note that expert foresters have, during the last few years, in Europe 

 and elsewhere, thrown doubt on the ages of many trees deemed by tradition, more or 

 less authentic, to be " historic." It has been pointed out in some cases that trees 

 in a forest die from natural causes or accident, and are succeeded by seedlings of their 



