Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 October 1883 — The Age of Trees. [ARTICLE]

The Age of Trees.

Usually the age of trees is determined by the number of rings added every year to their circumference. But this is no certain test, for they constantly develop very unequally from their center, so that in specimens preserved in museums great inequality in the rings may be seen. For example, in Kew there is a specimen l .in which there are 250 rings upon one side to fiHy'on the other. The largest number of rings ever counted was upon an oak felled in 1812, where they amounted to

710, But even in estimating the age of this particular tree an allowance of 300 years was made to cover the remaining rings which it was no longer possible to count. Such a computation as this amounts in reality to little more than guesswork, and leaves us very much at the conclusion at which Pliny arrived centuries ago, that “the life of some trees may be believed to be prodigious.” — Exchange.