These pines stand upon a bluff, composed of compact ferruginous sand of great depth, and are exposed to the full sweep of the western and northern winds. In the matter of soil and exposure they have had equal chances. It is not readily seen, if at all determinable, why more of these trees should not have reached the maximum size, and become stately trees, which, in a sadly deforested landscape, are commanding objects.
A year later two wild cherries were planted near the pines by the same person. “These trees were very small,” he writes me, “as I pulled them up with my hand and carried them to the yard, as one would a walking-stick. Probably neither was more than an inch in diameter.” These trees are in full vigor to-day, one measuring seventy-three inches and the other sixty-eight in circumference. The former is fully fifty feet in height, and the crop of fruit it bears annually is enormous.
In 1836 my grandfather found among a lot of peach-trees that he had purchased an elm (Ulmus Americana) which “was a mere switch.” It was planted in an out-of-the-way corner, and is now a splendid tree, with a spread of branches measuring seventy feet. The circumferential measurement, at a height of four feet from the ground, is one hundred and three inches.
Of the oaks, cedar, and beech, of which I have many fine specimens upon the farm, I have not been able to gather any definite data, but it would appear that the growth is exceedingly slow, after a certain term of years. My uncle is very positive that a black oak in the lane and a red cedar near by have not increased materially in growth in the past half-century. He believes the cedar to have “quite stood still,” and this may not be so strange, for it is known to be considerably over one hundred years old. It was a conspicuous roadside tree in 1802. It measures but eighteen inches in diameter.
[1]. Since the above was written, one of these pines has been felled, and the rings of annual growth carefully counted. They are sixty in number, which accords with the history given above of the planting, now nearly fifty-five years ago. It may be well to add that, while each ring is distinctly defined, there are several much larger than the others, and a general increase of the width of the rings upon the southeastern side of the trunk.
Fossil Man in the Delaware Valley.
The modest, peaceful valley of the Delaware River, from the head of tide-water southward, is as little suggestive of the Arctic Circle, for at least nine months of the year, as do its low and weedy banks in summer suggest the tropics. On the contrary, every tree, shrub, sedge, beast, bird, or fish that you see above, about, or within it is a feature of a strictly temperate climate. Nevertheless, a dim recollection of more stirring times still clings to it, and the year not unfrequently opens with the river firmly ice-bound. Over its shallows are often piled great masses of up-river ice, borne hither after a storm by the swollen current. Often the broad and shallow channel is effectually closed, and the river becomes, for the time being, a frozen lake.
But the ice, of late centuries, has not been able to hold its own for any significant length of time. The increasing warmth of the sun, and the south winds with their accompanying rains, soon start the little icebergs oceanward, or melt them when they are securely stranded. Except a few scattered masses along the shady shores, the river, by April, is a quiet, shallow, tide-water stream again.