1885.] The Age of Forest Trees. 839 
One ring is formed each year between the bark and the pre- 
viously-formed wood. If there is a large healthy top of branches, 
these concentric rings will be relatively large, especially so if the 
tree is not overshadowed by older and larger ones. During the 
past fifteen years there have been thousands of white oak trees 
sawed down in this. country (Western Indiana) for staves, and I 
have taken the time and trouble to count the ages of several 
hundred of them; also the ages of other forest trees; but my 
observations of the oaks have exceeded those of all other kinds. 
I was led into this investigation by reading an article in a news- 
paper purporting to be copied from some scientific magazine, the 
name of which I have forgotten, which article claimed, not only 
confidently but positively, that the large rings of growth indicated 
past wet years in Kansas, or years favorable to vegetation, and. 
that the small rings indicated past dry years, or years unfavorable 
to vegetable growth. The article stated that the count from the 
outside ring inwardly coincided with the past seasons historically 
as far back as the whites or Indians had any tradition of the sea- 
sons. The article further stated that some English scientific 
journal had published an article by some traveler up the Nile, in 
Egypt, who had made the same discovery there. He had counted 
the rings on the oak stumps there from the outside inwardly, 
comparing them with the years counted backwards, and had made 
the startling discovery that the seven years of plenty followed by 
the seven years of famine during Joseph’s rule in Egypt, were 
actually and accurately registered on the stumps. Sometimes an 
absurdity is so plain that nobody sees it at all. This is one of that 
sort. It did not then occur to me that a tree old enough to keep 
books in Joseph’s time would, if living now, be about twenty-five 
feet in diameter, if it grew like an average Hoosier oak. But the 
story had a charm for the credulous, and it led me to estimate 
the age of trees here, and to compare the large and small 
rings with the years of plenty and the years of famine. To my 
Surprise, and considerable disappointment, there was no coinci- 
dence whatever between them. I found stumps of trees of the 
same species, the same size (and presumably the same age) stand- 
ing within twenty feet of each other, on the same kind of soil, 
cut down the same year, and, so far as I could judge, subject to 
the same conditions throughout, one showing a large ring where 
its neighbor would show only an average one, and in some few 
