p-wood has entirely disappeared
beneath the surface, still retain the red heart-wood intact, I
dare say good for another hundred, or maybe many more.

As the tree is sturdy in its defiance of moth and mould, so it is
bold in its endurance of all weathers and adaptable to all soils.
It grows from Nova Scotia to northern Florida and westward to the
Rocky Mountains, being replaced farther west by another species so
much like it that only the expert can tell the difference. In
Florida, along the Gulf coast and the Bahamas again, experts say,
it is replaced by another species, but there too only the experts
can tell the difference. In the beautiful province of Ontario,
between the three great lakes Ontario, Erie and Huron, is a region
where it grows well and is universally prevalent, and it grows
alike in the limestone flats of the South and on the bleak sandy
prairies and ridges of our great central plain. In the Tennessee
mountains and southward into Alabama is, however, the greatest
red-cedar region and the place where the trees reach their finest
growth. In northern Alabama fallen trees have been found 100 feet
in height, three feet and more in thickness at a height of four
and a half feet from the ground, and without limbs for two-thirds
their height. These were, of course, trees of the virgin forests,
long since removed that we and all the world might have lead-pencils.
The world has tried many things for pencils, and some of
them have had a fugitive popularity, but still the millions of
pencils daily used are made from the diminishing supply of red
cedar.

[Illustration: A Cape Cod Cedar Centuries Old]

To us in New England to whom a cedar tree thirty feet high is no
common sight the stories of these hundred-foot high trees seem
strange indeed, and I know of but one red cedar whose diameter is
as much as twelve inches. This tree is much less than thirty feet
in height, however. It grows by itself on rocky ground in a
pasture where it has no close neighbors of any variety. Its trunk
divides at eight feet from the ground into many branches which
make a round head whose ancient, twigs are hoary with lichens and
seem to be in the last stages of senile debility. Yet every year
the old tree puts forth a crop of new leaves and defies the decay
of centuries. How many years old this tree is I cannot say, but I
think it very many. We readily tell the age of many trees by
counting the rings of growth after they are cut. Ced