14 
THE SECRET OF THE BIG TREES. 
that can be heard a mile. The sawn surface exposes the rings of 
growth so that all one has to do is to measure them, provided the 
cutting has taken place recently. In the case of older stumps we 
sometimes were obliged to scrape the surface to get rid of the pitchy 
sap which had accumulated on it. In other cases, especially where 
the stumps had been burned, we had to chisel grooves or take a whisk- 
broom and sweep off an accumulation of needles and dirt. ' 
When all was ready, two of us lay down on our stomachs on the top 
of the stump, or it might be on two stumps standing close together, 
while the third sought the shade, or the sun, or a shelter from the 
rain, as the weather might dictate. The two who were on the stump 
were equipped with penknife, ruler, and hand lens. The ruler was 
placed on the flat surface of the stump with its zero at the edge of 
the outer ring. Then we counted off the rings in groups of 10, read 
the ruler and called off the number to the one who sat under shelter 
with notebook and pencil. Had the lumbermen seen us we should 
have appeared like crazy creatures as we la}^ by the hour in the sun 
and rain calling out “ forty-two,” and being answered by the recorder, 
“ forty-two ”; “ sixty-four,” “ sixty-four ”; “ seventy-eight,” “ seven¬ 
ty-eight,” and so on, interminably. It was not inspiring work merely 
to measure, and it was distinctly uncomfortable to lie on one’s stom¬ 
ach for hours after a hearty meal. Often it was hard to see the 
rings without a lens, and in some cases even the lens scarcely showed 
them all, for the smallest were only two-hundredths of an inch thick, 
very different from some of the big ones, half an inch thick. Never¬ 
theless, the work was decidedly interesting. If we were busy on 
different radii of the same tree there was always a rivalry as to who 
would finish first, but undue haste was tempered by the danger that 
the results of our two measurements might not agree. The chief 
interest therefore lay in seeing how nearly the same number of rings 
would be counted on different radii. If we were at work on dif¬ 
ferent trees the rivalry was as to whose tree would turn out oldest; 
for, like the rest of mankind, we had a feeling of personal merit if 
the thing with which we by pure chance were concerned happened to 
turn out better than that of our neighbor. 
One of our chief difficulties lay in the fact that in bad seasons one 
side of a tree often fails to lay on any wood, especially in cases where 
a clump of trees grow together in the sequoias’ usual habit, and the 
inner portions do not have a fair chance. Often we found a dif¬ 
ference of 20 or 30 years in radii at right angles to one another; and 
in one extreme case, one side of a tree 3,000 years old was 500 years 
older than the other, according to our count. All these things neces¬ 
sitated constant care in order that our results might be correct. 
Another trial lay in the fact that in spite of the extraordinary dura¬ 
bility of the wood, a certain number of decayed places are found, 
