Litchfield enquirer., 1881-09-01
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WHOLE E NO. 2SS2

| tuc wet SOll SILKS or ufI6S, tue mlgDLy trunks
 are seen piled upon each other as in Maine
 log jam. What are seen, too, are but the up-
 perniost strata of piles on piles unseen below. One or two evidences may be cited to show
 not only the great depth but the wide exlen. sion of the forest beyond the limits of the
 swamp. Down near the tide waters of the
 Delaware, seven miles away, where no sur
 face indications appear, white cedar log was
 found some years ago at the depth of twelve feet. At Cape May, twenty miles distant, the I tools of wOrkmen digging an artesian well
 were stopped twenty feet down by big cedat
 log which, 1t was thought, would discoIor and
 detle the water if the work proceeded In
 1873 the City Council of Cape May ordered
 that an artesian vel! should be dug to supply
 the city reservoir with water. Al the depth
 of eighty seven feet, after the tools had pen
 etrated half dozen strata of gravel, sand ur
 hard clay, an alluVial deposit was reached exactly like that in which lie ihe cedars at Dennisville In it was struck a solid log, four feetin diameter, which was bored through,
 and specimens brought to the surface. In digging an artesian well at the Columbia House, Cape May, some time ago. pieces ot
 wood were found at the depth of nlnety-two
 feet.
 Perhaps the most remarkable of all the phe-
 nouiena relating to the su0terranean woods Is
 the singular preservation of the logs, whose fbres as clean and smooth as when their green | tops, hundred and fifty feet above the swamp, rustled in the breeze long cons ago
 Doctor Maurice Beesley, the paLriarchal Ga- ] len of Dennisyille, to whose courtesy and
 kindness l am indebted for many facts con- cerning the sunken forests, and who has made
 them special study, believes that the trees,
 as soon as they are covered by the soil of Ibe swamps, become dramatically sealed and that
 they will remained preserved as long as the | world lasts and the swamp soil still surrounds | them. If this theory be tested, however, it seems strange that wood placed at great depths in ordinary soils and covered closely from the air should not be similarly preserved. We have wooded swamps in New York state
 as soft and deep as those at Dennisyille, but | no sunken forests. It seems more credible that there is some subtitle and unknown qual-
 ity either of the amber -colored water of the
 Dennisville swamps or of the peculiar aluviaI 1 deposit which accounts for the phenomenon.
 It IS a well known fact that in certain pcat' formations of Great Britain human bodies can be preserved for many years without lus-
 ing their rotundity and freshness. Perhaps
 the analogy applies to the big archaic trees
 of Dennisville.
 The age of the sunken trees opens 8 long
 and shadowy vista for research. The age oG
 a single tree is readily found by counting it's
 rings. Doctor Beesley has thus counted ten
 hundred and eighty rings of white cedar
 stump representing an age of the same num- Der of years. But this stump was only i've | feet in diameter while some of the trees have
 a diameter of seven feet The rings near the
 center are perhaps three-eights of an inch l apart, while toward the circumference they are so crowded that they must be counted
 with the microscope SO that the ratio of sev. 1 en to i've cannot be used to find the longevity l of a seven-fOot cedar which probably lived
 some two thousand years before it fell. The l absolute age of the underground logs--tlat
 has elapsed since they sprouted-is ascertain l ed only by approximations. Doctor Beesey,
 however, has made some valuable and sugges.
 tive investigations of the subject. In one case he found tree six feet through and
 about the same number of feet underground.
 This trunk was accidentally discovered by W0rkmen who had exhumed a smaller log above it. On top of the great log was found l large underground stump five feet in diame-
 ter, and smaller stump was superimposed on the larger one. As the tree of the larger stump could not have begun to grow before the large tree-trunk fell, and the upper stump
 belonged to tree that germinated on the trunk underneath, by counting the rings of the stumps-Or the rings of trees of the same slze-and also the rings of the underlying tree, the minimum age of the latter was ascertain ed. It was twenty one hundred and fifty years. But counting the age of the Overlying soil. and also of 8 covered tree which lay over l the upper stump, the doctor concludes that the big tree underneath all germinated thirty one hundred and fifty years ago. Another test the doctor applied in the following man. l ner: He found half-covered in a cedar | swamp log with the ends cut evidently by | human hands. It was found that the log had been cut for an adjacent sawmill which was | running about one hundred years ago Old | citizens of Dennisvie whose memory retraced | ssrknp A, ll when the locality of the cut log had been worked either for living or sunken timber.
 The inference, then, was just that the log had | been cut for the old sawmill and was at least | one hundred years old. Four inches of the | peaty soil had accumulated up the sides of the log. Here then was a unit by which the rate Of accumulation of soil over the big trees could be measured. Each four inches repre- sented century's growth of the alluvIal l mud. The bottom of the big tree unlcr the stumps was twelve feet beneath the surface of the ground. By dividing twelve feet or | one hundred and forty. four inches by four we get thirty-sx hundred years as the time l since the log first sprOuted from it's little ! seep, which was about one. quarter the size of buck shot, or, say, one-eighth of an inch in diameter. or course all calculations of the foregoing kind are rough and inex- | act. In the case of the tree cited the accu.
 
 1 might have been more or less rapid than now, nor can the interval that elapsed be- | tween the growths of the stumps and the tree be estimated. But the computation of l thlrty-six hundred years for the old tree is probably below rather than above the truth. The time is within the the easy memory @ | living man when the Dennsville swamps were l covered with growing timber as large as that ! which now lies below. Mir. William Hooper, of Cape May, who worked thirty years ago in the swamps, remembers feling tree so large | that standing by it's side he could barely look over it's upper edge Upon it's trunk he count ed about eleven hundred rings of annular growth. What a link among our eastern woods was. this great cedar Let us take a suggestion of the poet Holmes and imagine strip an inch or two wide cut from it's circurD- ference to the centre. What chronicle of more than thousand years of mortal vicissi. tude, of gory campaigns, of shifting dynaslies, of ebb and How of national life could be mark ed on the area of this narrow yardstick A single pencil dot on the microscopic lines near the outer edge would stand for our war of lSl2. An overlapping mark perhaps aquar. terof an inch long would span the career nt Napoleon from Toulon to Waterloo. Move a hundred years nearer the centre. Another short line covers the reigns of Louis the Four teenth of France, of William and Mary. of Queen Anne and the triumphant campaigns of Marlborough. The tree was two thirds grown when Luther was summoned to the Diet af Worms, and when Columbus, twenty mine years before, discovered our continent. It was 8 stalwart trunk when William the Conquernr fought at Hastings, and it was a lusty sapling when Charlemagne renewed the Holy R0nan Empire. If we call thistree old what shall we say of it's ancestors few feet down, whose circles include the rise and fall of Rome, the coming of the Saviour. the splendor of Athens. the luxury of Persia and Babylon, the exodus and wars of Israel, nay, perhaps even that period of the patriarchs of Scripture which lies on the shadowy edge of human history Yet even these trees were young in comparison