g66 
THE TROPICAL 
AaRICULTURIST. [April 1, 1902. 
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 ai;e 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 
tea years as in the preceding seventy, and soon be- 
comes a large tree. 
What does the stump of this old white pine teach 
us ? Evidently something extraordinary has happened 
to it, for way in near the heiart a black scar runs 
around the edge of one ot the annual rings for nearly 
one-fourth of its circumference, and outside of this 
the rings are no longer complete, but have their edges 
tnrued in against the face of this scar. Each subse- 
quent 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 rouiiJness, 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, destroying most of its com- 
panions and burning a large strip of the tender bark 
on its exposed side so that the bark died and fell off. 
But being better prote' ted than the other and having 
still three-fourths of its bark left uninjured, it soon 
recovered and its stump reveals how successfully it 
strove to heal the wood and grow to maturity to per- 
petuate its species. 
But as it takes many swallows to make the summer, 
BO 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 snpremacy, yeSin a sense they are 
helpful to each other, and protect each other from 
their common enemies. 
The 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 ia and 
replace the old. Much of this history the rings will 
reveal to us, as is the oase in some of the following 
actual examples from studies recently made in the 
pine forests of Northern Minnesota. 
In one locality where rather small Norway pine 
stood very close together, making a thick stand, it was 
found that almost without exception the trees were 
of the same age -« 138 years. No matter how large or 
how tender the tree, it was jaat as old as its neighbour. 
Tbe rings on all these trees were very large at the 
heart, but as fifty or sixty years went by, they got 
narrower and narrower, nntil some of the smaller trees 
Beemed hardly to grow at all. The reason was plain ; 
there were too many trees — and as none would give up 
the struggle, all suffered alike. 
But they were not the only sufierers. Here and 
there we see a slender, struggling white pine making 
a vain attempt to capture its share of son and rain. 
Count reveals that these white pines are also all of 
the same age, but unfortunately only 126 years old. 
The Norways had twelve years the start of them and 
the delay was f-atal. 
How did it happen that these trees came in so thickly 
and all the same year? Perhaps further study will 
help us to find out. So we go to another cutting 
over a mile from first. Here we find many trees 
about the size of those we have left, and counting 
the rings we find them to bo of the same age — 138 
years. Uut here there is something more. In a 
Becluded nook stands a group of immense white and 
Norway pine trees — perhaps a dozen. These prove 
to be very old, but, remarkably enough, also of even 
B,ge — each stuoip showing 315 rings. Where is tha 
rest of this patriarchal forest ? Close about the few 
remaining may ha aeon the forma of many more 
stretched upon the ground and slowly decaying, 
j'beee havo evideutlj' been blowa down, poasibly aftej 
being killed by fire. Their fate gives up the clue to 
the disappearance of the others. It is plain that 
some time before 1763 a great disaster overtook the 
pine forest in this place. M )St of it was wiped out of 
existence, either by tire or wind. Bat heie and there 
a clump remains, and from them in a favourable seed 
year came the seed which started the new and thriv- 
ing crop of Norway pine. 
To fiod outif po-isible whether this coiiflaguration 
or blow-down was more than local we go to a cattiag 
some te i miles from our first, and here again the 
oldest and largest of the stand, which is all rather 
small, prove to be 138 years old. Whatever 
the cause then, it must have operated over a larga 
area, but this is not a thick stand ; in fact, there are 
many gaps, and much of the timber is limby and 
knotty, a sure sign that it has not been grown very 
close together, and soon we find that many — in fa«t 
most of trees — are but 101 years old, there being two 
distinct age classes. 
How did this come about ? Let us look at the older 
trees. Here upon one of them is a fire scar made 
when the tree was eighteen years of age. Upon 
another we find a similar scar, made in the same 
year, and on close examination we can hardly fin l 
one of the older trees free from the marks of this 
fire. How plain it is that this fire occurring jast 
120 years ago, orin the year 1781, when the young 
forest was eighteen years of age, killed nearly all the 
young piue and gave the forest a blow from which, in 
this place at least, it never fully recovered. But it 
did the best it could, for the age of the second class 
of trees — 101 years — shows that the young survivors of 
the fire grew rapidly, until at the age of 38 years 
they were enabled to produce a crop of seeds, or pos- 
sibly the old trees from which the first ones came 
were stilling livin? and seeds down the ground a 
second time, so that a fairly good stand of trees was 
finally produced. 
These studies lead us to infer that pines reproduce 
themselves as forests generally under exceptional or 
unusual circumstances, and that that is their natural 
way of maintaining themselves as species. The young 
white and Norway pine, esnecially the latter, cannot 
endure much shade when sm.ill, and could not possibly 
grow up as a thick forest under their own shade or tne 
shade of other trees, yet we nearly always find them 
in dense groves. The rings tell us the secret. In the 
long period of 200 to 300 years during which the pines 
live, the " accidt-nt " of fire or wind becomes a cer- 
tainty, and when a strip of forest is laid low or burned 
up, the neighbouring trees stand ready to scatter the 
seed far and wide in the wind and the new growth 
springs up and flourishes. 
This is nature's method. But nature's methods are 
so perfectly barruonized that but little is needed to 
throw them out of balance. 
Nature clears in strips and dashes seed there, and 
fires are rare and far apart. Man clears over wide 
areas and fires of his origin sweep repeatedly over his 
slashings. The young pines spring up even after the 
second and third fires, but by persevtranoe the ficea 
finally destroy them all, and what nature intended to 
be the young pine forest becomes a barren wilderness. 
SiMi'LE CuHE FOE Gapes IN Ohickens. — Punoti some 
holes in the bottom of an old tin bucket. Get a 
piece of glass large enough to cover the top. Put 
a hot coal in a saucer, and pour a drop or two of 
carbolic acid on it. Place the chickens in the bucket, 
and set the latter over the saucer. The fumes of th« 
acid will rise through the holes. Do not put the 
bucket on till the first fumes have passed away. 
Watch the chickens through the glass so that you 
may not smoiher them. If they seem overcom* 
take the bucket off the saucer and remove the 
glass. One opeiation is usually sufficient. By doing 
this, you will lose no ohickens from gapes. — QueenS' 
land Agricultural Journal, Feb. 1, 
