* 
1885. ] The Age of Forest Trees. 843 
born in 1502. There is to-day the well-marked grave of the 
fallen giant, the dirt piled upon the south-east side of the hole, 
and a long depression in the ground where the trunk fell and 
rotted till not a vestige of its wood can be seen to-day (though 
some traces of the bark of the roots can). This depression points 
to the stump of the damaged oak. The two younger had been 
freshly cut down when I examined them, Their stumps were 
about four feet across, and there was not over an inch difference 
between their diameters, though ninety-two years difference in 
their ages. The younger had a large, healthy top, no broken or 
dead limbs, and it had put on rings of growth from the beginning 
of more than average size. The older one had been injured in 
its branches by the fall of the still older one before mentioned 
(in 1731) and for fifty-seven years had put on very small rings of 
growth (about twenty-five to thirty years to the inch instead of 
twelve to fifteen as it should), when a new set of branches devel- 
oped to take the place of the damaged ones, and the rings began 
to increase in size and gradually attained to the average. I ex- 
amined their tops, which coincided with what has gone before, 
There were the peculiar knots in the top of the older one where 
dead limbs had rotted off and were healed over. (Any expert 
timberman will readily recognize them.) During this delay the 
younger oak caught up with the older one in size. The size of a 
tree is a very uncertain indication of its age. 
In all the cases of the hundreds I have examined of the oaks 
(the oldest trees of the forest I think), I never saw but one that 
was here when Columbus discovered America. That one was by 
Aar the largest I ever saw, and was over six hundred years old, 
about twice the age of the other largest ones. I could not get 
its exact age as it was so decayed near the heart I could not dis- 
tinguish the rings. It was between six and seven feet in diame- 
ter, and forked about sixty feet up, and each fork was as large as 
the other largest trees. It was not sound enough to make good 
_ lumber, being what in this region is called “ doughty,” a state be- 
tween soundness and rottenness. It had been down a year before 
I examined it (being out of the county when it was cut), so that 
it was very difficult to examine it. I have mislaid my memo- 
randum of it, but it would be about as follows: At the age of 
about two hundred years it had some ill-fortune which caused it 
to form about one hundred small rings. It then regained its 
