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82 PATTERSON v. M'CAUSLAND.
ment of the tree. Whence, and from actual observation, it has
been confidently asserted, that the best season to cut timber, as
well as to prune fruit trees, to prevent the dry rot in the timber, or
in that part of the living tree from which the amputated limb has
been taken, is during the summer when the trees are in full foliage,
and their sap is in pure and active circulation, (i)
But all trees, although standing within the general range of their
appropriate climate, are very materially affected by the peculiar
soil and situation in which they may happen to be rooted, (j)
Even the great white pine, (pinus strobus,) the lofty chief of our
forests, which in some instances elevates its top to the height of a
hundred and eighty feet from the ground; (k) and the beautiful
flowering poplar, (liriodendron tulipefera,) which may be ranked
next to it in stature, and only after the oak in utility, exhibit, in the
texture of their wood as well as in their size, the most unequivocal
evidence of the generosity or unfriendliness of the soil in which they
stand. (l) But such is the peculiar constitution of the white oak,
(quercus alba,) which for general use is considered as the most
valuable of all the timber trees of our Union, that it attains its lar-
gest size and greatest perfection in the cold and comparatively bar-
ren soil of those swampy plains, many of which extend in consi-
derable tracts along the borders of the Chesapeake, and on the
right and left shores of the lower Potomac; while on the otherwise
fertile soils, west of the mountains, it is by no means so remarkable
for its size. Whence it may be strongly inferred, that a tree, the
texture and density of the wood of all the species being known to be
alike, may in one situation attain a much larger size, and in a
transverse section of its trunk exhibit a greater number of concen-
tric circles than another of the same age the growth of a different
situation.
If it be true that trees are enlarged chiefly or only by the forma-
tion of successive concentrical layers, then it necessarily follows, that
those layers, as the tree enlarges, must become wider as well as
longer each year, so as to embrace the whole of its increased di-
mensions; and consequently the quantity of wood formed each
year, supposing the several concentrical layers to be of the same
(i) Essay on Vegetable Phyisology, by Armstrong, Prof. &c. Washington College,
Virg. chap. T and 19; The Farmers' Register, by Ruffin, 7 vol. No, 4 and 8.—(j ) 2
Mich. Am. Sylva, 130,226,-(k) 2 Mich. Am. Sylva, 293 —(l) l Mich. Am. Syl-
va, 302; 2 Mich. Am. Sylva, 295.
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