Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 September 1894 — TREES AS HISTORIANS. [ARTICLE]

TREES AS HISTORIANS.

They Tell of the Dry and Wet Seasons of a Century Ago. It has been found that the rings of growth visible in the trunks of trees have a far more interesting story to tell than has usually been supposed. Everybody knows that they indicate the number of years that the tree has lived; but J. Keuchler, of Texas, has recently made experiments and observations which seem to show that trees carry in their trunks a record of the weather conditions that have prevailed during the successive years of their growth. Several trees, each more than *IBO years old, were felled and the order and relative width of the rings of growth in their trunks were found to agree exactly. This fact showed that all the trees had experienced the same stimulation in certain years and the same retardation in other years. Assuming that the most rrpid growth had occurred in wet years, and the least rapid in dry years, it was concluded that of the 184 years covered by the life of the trees 60 had been very Wet, 6 extremely wet, 17 average as to the supply of moisture, 19 dry, 8 very dry and 6 extremely dry. But when the records of rainfall, running back as far as 1840, were consulted, it was found that they did not all agree with the record of the trees. Still it could not be denied that the rings in the trunks told a true story of the weather influences which had affected the trees in successive years. The conclusion was therefore reached that the record of the rings contained more than a mere index of the annual rainfall; that it showed what the character of the seasons had been as to sunshine, temperature, evaporation, regularity or irregularity of the supply of moisture, and the like; in short, that the trees contained, indelibly imprinted in their trunks, more than 100 years of nature’s history, a history which we might competely decipher if we could but look upon the face of nature from a tree’s point of view.—[New York Advertiser.