Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1878-05-18
AN INTERESTING CHAPTER ON TREES BY
ONE WHO has STUDIED THEM.
II uskfn Upon Tree.GrOWth Sharply
Criticised.


Criticised.
HING GEORGE Co, VA.
Editor StdT:-The mention in your Art
Notes" that the influence of Ruskin as an art
critic was very much on the decline in Eng
land, recalled to mind an opinion formed on
reading his chapter on Trees years ago that
his accuracy as an observer of nature was
too questionable for him to maintain his posi-
ton long as an absolute authority in an art
whose great object is to reproduce in the mind
itself. In speaking OF the growth of forest
trees,-'oak, ash, elm, poplar, pine, beach,
&c, he says: First, then, neither the stems
where they fork" Wherever a stem sends
OFF a branch or lesser bough or a bud. the stem
or branch is on the instant less in diameter by
they have sent off and remain of the same
diameter until they send Off another branch or
boueD." This law is imperative" he repeats,
land without exception. no bOugh, nor stem,
nor twig even tapering or becoming narrower
by hair breadth save where it parts with
some, portion OF its substance at the fork or
bud
Now this strong and reiterated statement
was so contrary to my experience-an expert
ence of years in the fOrest-that made 1t an
sion arrived at was that all these trees do
taper in stem and bough, taper very consider
ably, and IN every species uniformly, from
natural and obvious causes, and that this taper
themselves. The growth of all forests is al
first, II thickly Set, branches, or nearly So
and upwards towards the light and air by the
header" or terminal Shoot" and if there
happen any side twigs they soon die iron,
lack OF light and fail away. And from the very
start the growth Is tapeIng. The -four barrel
hoop pole that starts from the stump Of a
former cutting, at three years attains height
of six feet, with butt diameter Oi one and a
half inches, and yet with neither side branch
or even leaf below the extreme top, will taper
haf fan El,A
fourteen foot pole, which must be one inch at
the top. IL perfectly limbeSS is never less than
two inches at the butt, and the ladder or scat
fold pole, thirty feet in length, having a top
three inches across, is never less than five
inches at the base. In large timber. where the
whole trunk outside few inches of heart
wood is perfectly clear this taper is even
| more conclusive. A large oak, or pine
which at fifty feet will have a diameter
of twenty inches at the butt will have at least
diameter of thirty. To show that that this
dlminutiOn is not the result of any side growth
that has rotted away, take say twenty of the
| last years of its growth, in which there has
been not even side twi to divide the sub
! stance, and you will find that while the total
| growth as indicated by the rings at the butt
| has been from five to six inches on each side
| or ten to twelve inches on the entire diameter
| at the top these same twenty rings will
| measure but three OF four inches on each side
This constant and uniform tapering is SO well
settled among timber men that il is always
taken into consideration in their measure
ments. Instead of determining the contents
OF long sticks by the average diameter of the
| distance from butt to top. This tapering is as
| great in the top among branches, and in the
branches themselves, as in the stem, SO that
| instead of branch or bOugh and the stem
| together above the point of union containing
| "a round log of the same diameter of the trunk
| from which they sprung" they seldom contain
! over three -fOurthS as much. The cross section
OF the trunk: say a foot below a branch, will
! always contain more superficial inches, by at
| least fourth, than the cross section of both
| body and branch foot above.
! II it is objected that he had reference to the
| open field growth OF England, it can be
answered that the growth OF all trees, whether
standing in the open field or the forest, is sub
| ject to the same laws. 1t is sometime difficult
| to determine in short. bodied trees how much
is true trunk. The braeing growth, which
extends upwards from the root, often inter
ing downward from the branches but just so
much of the tree as is round-t,e., not ribbed
WIN In Ines; s; braeng extensions always taper
E, se eyer Sfs SO smoi5 Now one OF the
vious. The plant foods mineral earthly
and gaseous, coming up from the root in the
| sap is, OF course, more abundant at the base,
| and more is aSSimilated in the fibrO,lS LAYERS
between the wood and bark, of which the new
| wood is formed, than ascendS to the top aud a
greater annual growth is made there. Then
there are some earthly and mineral ingredients
that abound at the base that are scarcely
| found at the top. The engineers books tell
| US of the specific gravity of oak, ash, &c, but
M 10 elilt Slo"b uiNelnltS lli Tie SpeclHc
| gravity of wood from the same tree A cubic
| foot OF ash. just above the root, where the ash
looming principles most abound, often weigh
| ing more than cubic foot of water: while a
| cubic FOOT from the more carbOnaceOus ton
will only weigh twO-thrds as much This
more abundant presence of mineral ingre
dents in the butt log" is what constitutes
the difference as to hardness and tough
ness and what gives ii its greater value.
said tapering growth was necessary A
forest constructed on this principle, of equa.
growth from bottom to top, would not be bic
to bear very violent tornado. The pressure
at the top would all be concentrated at the
base, and the tree would have to sue
cumb, but taperng growth distributes
the strain, the base rendering some ana
the top more. and no one place having
more pressure to resist than another the
tree survives. To be more explicit, if a tree
were OF equal diameter through its whole
length, IL would always be broken Off at the
base as the fulcrum or point of greatest pres
sure, and with leverage of the entire length
OF the tree would be very apt to break even i'm
moderate gale but with a tapering growth
1t as frequently breaks at the top as butt A
treatise on trees giving us the chemical com
position OF their different partS-Stem, bough
tWlg, leaf and root, the difference of the phys
zeal properties OF each part as to hardness,
dlfterent soils upon their chemical and phys
lcal qualitieS-wOuld be not only interesting
out useful: But to return to RuSkin: one
could hardly help feeling that if his state
| mentS so positively made on one subject were
50 liable to criticism, the same tendency to
theOrlSlng instead OF observing might peryade
all his Otner writings, and his influence as an
eXpounder OF nature be consequently weak
ened. OBSERyER