Here's
the stump of a white oak cut last fall. It was about two feet in diameter.
Let's count the rings to find its age--about ninety years. It flourished in
its youth and grew rapidly, but it had a hard time after about fifty years.
At that time it was either burned, or mutilated by a falling tree, or
struck by lightning."
"Now, how do you make that out?" asked father, intensely interested.
"See the free, wide rings from the pith out to about number forty-five. The
tree was healthy up to that time. Then it met with an injury of some kind,
as is indicated by this black scar. After that the rings grew narrower. The
tree struggled to live."
We walked on with me talking as fast as I could get the words out. I showed
father a giant, bushy chestnut which was dominating all the trees around
it, and told him how it retarded their growth. On the other hand, the other
trees were absorbing nutrition from the ground that would have benefited
the chestnut.
"There's a sinful waste of wood here," I said, as we climbed over and
around the windfalls and rotting tree-trunks. "The old trees die and are
blown down. The amount of rotting wood equals the yearly growth. Now, I
want to show you the worst enemies of the trees. Here's a big white oak, a
hundred and fifty years old.
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