FORESTRY. 



EDITFD BY DR. B. E. FERNOW, 



Director of the New York School of Forestry, Cornell University, assisted by Dr. John C. Gifford of the same 



institution. 



It takes thirty years to grow a tree and thirty minutes to cut it down and destroy it. 



. THE TALE OF THE RINGS. 

 H. H. CHAPMAN. 



Every tree has its life history securely 

 locked in its heart. Each ygar <of its 

 growth a thin ring of wood is formed next 

 to the bark, and a corresponding layer of 

 bark adjoining it. As the tree swells and 

 swells, the bark is forced outward, and 

 splits into wide fissures. Much of it falls 

 off altogether, but each ring of wood re- 

 mains a faithful record of the year in 

 which it was formed. When the ax or 

 saw of the woodman ends the life of the 

 tree and brings its body crashing to the 

 earth, this record is unrolled before us, 

 and by it we can determine almost every 

 incident in the life and growth of the tree. 



Trees, as well as human beings, have 

 their period of struggle and hardship, their 

 prosperous times, their terrible misfor- 

 tunes and hairbreadth escapes, their in- 

 juries and recovery, and their complete 

 submergence in a struggle in which the 

 odds were too great for their feeble 

 strength to cope with. Here is a sturdy 

 oak whose tale revealed is that of steady 

 perseverance in the face of difficulties ; a 

 slow, gradual growth, never checked, never 

 ■daunted, till the final goal is reached, and 

 it stands supreme, literally monarch of all 

 it surveys. Here is a mighty spruce, which 

 has a tale of perseverance, but of a differ- 

 ent sort. The oak conquers by force of 

 character, by its fighting qualities. The 

 spruce succeeds by its ability to endure. 

 It is like the patient Jew, frugal, living 

 on what would be starvation to others, 

 till when their day of strength is past, and 

 sudden disaster overtakes them, he enters 

 into his inheritance and prospers amaz- 

 ingly. 



See the record of this spruce, 50, 60, 

 70 years, each represented by a ring so 

 small that it takes great care to distinguish 

 them at all, and the whole 70 do not occupy 

 the space of 3 inches at the heart of the 

 tree. What a tale of hardship this sets 

 'forth. Other trees ihave preempted the 

 light on which the existence of a tree de- 

 pends. The poor spruce must be content 

 with the twilight that niters through the 

 branches of its enemies, the poplar, birch, 

 and pine. But it is content. It knows that 

 if the young poplars or pines spring up 

 beside it in the shade, they can not endure, 

 but will quickly die. It knows that the 



time will come when old age or disease 

 will weaken the poplars, or, perhaps, a 

 heavy wind will lay them low, and the 

 spruce, old in years, but insignificant in 

 stature, will escape injury, and still young 

 in vitality will soon spring ahead in the 

 race. Now see its rings ; it has made as 

 much growth in 10 years as in the preced- 

 ing 70 and soon becomes a large tree. 



What does the stump of this old white 

 pine teach us? Evidently something extra- 

 ordinary has happened to it, for' away in, 

 near the heart, a black scar runs around the 

 edge of one of the annual rings, for nearly 

 one fourth of its circumference, and out- 

 side of this the rings are no longer com- 

 plete, but have their edges turned in against 

 the - face of this scar. Each subsequent 

 ring reaches farther across it. By the 

 time they have met in the center many 

 years have elapsed and there is a deep fis- 

 sure where the scar once existed; but 

 the later rings have bridged the gap and, 

 growing thicker in the depression, soon fill 

 the circumference of the tree to its natu- 

 ral roundness, leaving no sign of the 

 old wound. What happened to the tree? 

 While it was still young, its mortal enemy, 

 the forest fire, swept through the woods, 

 destroying most of its companions and 

 burning a large strip of the tender bark 

 on its exposed side, so that the bark died 

 and fell off ; but being better protected 

 than the others, and having still 24 of its 

 bark left uninjured it soon recovered, and 

 its stump reveals how successfully it 

 strove to heal the wound and grow to 

 maturity, to perpetuate its species. 



As it takes many swallows to make 

 the summer so it takes many trees to make 

 a forest, and the forest has almost as much 

 individuality as the tree itself. Though 

 each tree and each species struggle with 

 each other for life and supremacy, yet 

 in a sense they are helpful to each 

 other, and protect each other from their 

 common enemies. 



Chief enemies of the forest are the wind, 

 and the fire. Other enemies there are, 

 such as insects and disease, and sometimes 

 the forest suffers so severely that its whole 

 aspect is changed, and new species come 

 in and replace the old. Much of this his- 

 tory the rings will reveal to us, as is the 

 case in some of the following actual ex- 

 amples from studies recently made in the 

 pine forests of Northern Minnesota, 



392 



