09 



by its fighting qualities. The spruce succeeds by its ability to en- 

 dure. 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 amazingly. 



See the record of this spruces — fifty, sixty, seventy years, each 

 represented by a ring so small that it takes great care to dis- 

 tinguish them at all, and the whole seventy do not occupy the 

 space of three inches at the heart of the tree. What a tale of hard- 

 ship this sets forth. Other trees have pre-empted the light in 

 which the existence of a tree depends. The poor spruce must be 

 content with the twilight that filters through the branches of its 

 enemies, the poplar, birch and pine. But it is content. It knows 

 that the young poplars or pine spring up beside it in the shade 

 they could not endure, but would 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 ten years as in the pre- 

 ceding seventy, and soon becomes a large tree. 



What does the stump of this old white pine teach us ? Evi- 

 dently something extraordinary has happened to it, for way 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 complete, but have their 

 edges turned in against the face of this scar. Each subsequent 

 ring reaches further across it. By the time they have met in the 

 centre many years have elapsed and there is a deep fissure where 

 the scar once existed. But the later rings have bridged the gap 

 and, growing thicker in the depression, soon fill up the circum- 

 ference of the tree to its natural roundness, leaving no sign of the 

 old wood. What happened to the tree ? While it was still young 

 its mortal enemy, the forest fire, swept through the woods, de- 



