y make too dense a shade for the seedlings to survive. Look
at that bunch of sapling maples. See how they reach up, trying to get
to the light. They haven't a branch low down and the tops are thin. Yet
maple is one of our hardiest trees. Growth has been suppressed. Do you
notice there are no small oaks or hickories just here? They can't live
in deep shade. Here's the stump of a white oak cut last fall. It was
about two feet in diameter. Let's count the rings to find its age--about
ninety years. It flourished in its youth and grew rapidly, but it had a
hard time after about fifty years. At that time it was either burned, or
mutilated by a falling tree, or struck by lightning."

"Now, how do you make that out?" asked father, intensely interested.

"See the free, wide rings from the pith out to about number forty-five.
The tree was healthy up to that time. Then it met with an injury of
some kind, as is indicated by this black scar. After that the rings grew
narrower. The tree struggled to live."

We walked on with me talking as fast as I could get the words out. I
showed father a giant, bushy chestnut which was dominating all the trees
around it, and told him how it retarded their growth. On the other hand,
the other trees were absorbing nutrition from the ground that would have
benefited the chestnut.

"There's a sinful waste of wood here," I said, as we climbed over and
around the windfalls and rotting tree-trunks. "The old trees die and are
blown down. The amount of rotting wood equals the yearly growth. Now, I
want to show you the worst enemies of the trees. Here's a big white oak,
a hundred and fifty years old. It's almost dead. See the little holes
bored in the bark. They were made by a beetle. Look!"

I swung my hatchet and split off a section of bark. Everywhere in the
bark and round the tree ran little dust-filled grooves. I pried out a
number of tiny brown beetles, somewhat the shape of a pinching-bug, only
very much smaller.

"There! You'd hardly think that that great tree was killed by a lot of
little bugs, would you? They girdle the trees and prevent the sap from
flowing."

I found an old chestnut which contained nests of the deadly white moths,
and explained how it laid its eggs, and how the caterpillars that came
from them killed the trees by eating the leaves. I showed how mice and
squirrels injured the forest by eating the seeds.

"First I'd cut and sell all the matured and dead timber. Then I'd th