THE RINGS IN TREES.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 221, 24 September 1887, Page 3

THE RINGS IN TREES.

Every day some pet theory, long held and honestly venerated, is being demolished, and sent to the limbo of myth with Tell'a apple, Washington's cherry tree, and other old acquaintances. Now the age rings in trees has to sufFer limbonisation, if the word may bo allowed. Mr K. W. Furras, an agent of the United States Forestry Department, who has given much attention to the age of a tree as indicated by rings, as well as the period at which trees of different species stop growing and that at which the wood is at its best, has reached, some conclusions of general interest. Ha says : " Concentric or annual rings, which were once accepted as s:ood legal evidence, fail, except where climate, soil, temperature, humidity and aU other surroundings are regular and well balanced. Otherwise they aro mere guesswork. The only region within my knowledge where either rings or measurements were reliable indications is in the secluded, even and regularly tempered valleys of the boulhern Pacific Coast." Annual measurements of white elme, catalpa, soft maple, sycamore, big hickory, locust, coffee tree, burr and white oak, black walnut, osage orange, Avhite pine, red cedar, mulberry, and yellow willow (nineteen species), made in Southeastern Nebraska, show that "annual growth is very irregular, sometimes scarcely perceptible, and again quite large," and this he attributes to the difference in seasons. As trees increase in ago, inner rings decrease in size, sometimes almost disappearing. Diminished rate ol growth after a certain age is a rule. Of four great beeches mentioned by Loudon, there were three, each about 17 feet in girth, whoso ages were respectively 60, 102 and 200 years. Mr Furras found 12 rings in a black locust 5 years old, 21 rings in a shellbark hickory of 12 years, 10 rings in a pig hickory of 7 years, 11 rings in a wild crab apple of 5 years, and only 20 rings in a chestnut oak of 25 years. An American chestnut of only 4 years had 9 rings, while a peach of 8 years had only 5 rings. "Dr. A. M. Child s, a resident of Nebraska from 1854 to 1882, a careful observer for the Smithsonian Institution, who counted rings on some soft maples 11 years 2 months old, found on one side of the hearfc of one of them 40 rings and not less than 35 anywhere, which were quite distinct when the wood was green, but after it had seasoned only 24 rings could be distinguished. Another expert says that all our Northern hard woods make many rings' a year, sometimes as many as 12, but as the last set of cells in a year's growth are very small and the first very large, the annual growth can always be determined except when from local causes there is in any particular year little or no cell growth. This may give a large number on one side.

Area of British Colonies.— From ao elaborate series of calculations we see thafc England is reported to have 65 square miles of colony to the square mile of her own area ; Holland, 54 ; Portugal, 20 ; Denmark, 6-30; France, 1-90; Spain, o'B6 square miles. The area of the British colonies is nearly 8,000,000 of square miles —rather less than the area of the Russian Empire, including Siberia and Central Asia ; but if the area of the native feudatory states in India, amounting to 509,284 square miles be added, over which England exercises as great control as Russia does over much of the territory under its sway, together with that of the United Kingdom itself,. 120,757 miles, then the area of the British Empire exceeds that of the Russian; Empire by about 200,000 square miles, and it covers within a fraction of one-sixth o the whole land area of the globe. Paris has 49,000 street lamps, the other French towns 190,000 , total, 239,000. Truro Cathodral will be opened in October by the Prince and Princess of Wales. A new English Episcopal church is to erected in Boulogne.