60 PATTERSON v. M'CAUSLAND.—3 BLAND.

ence, and eighty or ninety feet of height. 2 Mich. Am. Sylva. 225.
In France, at Sancerre, in the department of the Cher, one hun-
dred and twenty miles from Paris, there was, in 1819, in existence
a chestnut tree (castanea vasca,) which, at six feet from the ground,
was thirty feet in circumference. Six * hundred years ago
75 it was called the great chestnut; and though it is supposed
to be more than a thousand years old, its trunk was still perfectly
sound, and its branches were annually laden with fruit. 2 Mich.
Am. Sylva. 142.

All forest trees have a range of climate within which they flour-
ish best, and far beyond which they will not grow, or cannot be
propagated; and even within the range of their appropriate cli-
mate, they are all more or less affected by the soil and situation in
which they happen to be rooted. As the great parent, nature,
rolls round the seasons of the changeful year, all of them assume
different external appearances in succession. That they do not
put forth their foliage or bloom in winter is obvious; but how they
are, in other respects and internally, affected by the revolutions
of the seasons, seems to be a mystery. Yet an opinion has become
very prevalent, that the structure of their wood, visible on dissec-
tion, affords evidence of the periodical progress of nature in effect-
ing their enlargement.

"Wood in vegetable anatomy, is that more or less hard and
compact substance which makes up the bulk of the trunk and
branches of a tree or shrub, and is concealed from view by the
bark. When cut transversely, the wood is found to consist of nu-
merous concentric layers, very distinct in the fir, and in trees of
cold or temperate countries in general; less so in those appropri-
ated to a tropical climate. The external part of each circular
layer being much the most hard and compact, often with somewhat
of a horny appearance, distinguishes the limits of each. Scarcely
any two layers of the same tree are precisely alike, in the propor-
tion which this compact part bears to the rest; nor does any one
layer exhibit a precise uniformity of diameter in its whole circle."
Rees' Cyclo.v. Wood in Vegetable Anatomy. And it is also said,
that "the bark of trees annually changes into lifeless wood; whence
the concentric rings, which are seen in the trunk of trees, when
they are felled, are annually produced; and are said generally to
be thicker on that side of the trunk, which grows towards the
south, than on the northern side; and thicker in the summers most
favorable to vegetation than the contrary. These rings, as they
lose their vegetable life, and at the same time a part of their mois-
ture by evaporation or absorption, gradually become harder and of
a darker color; insomuch, that by counting their number, it is said
that not only the age of the tree, but that the mildness or
76 moisture * of each summer during the time of its growth, may