AN INDESTRUCTIBLE TIMBER.

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume XLV, Issue 2930, 27 October 1925, Page 5

AN INDESTRUCTIBLE TIMBER.

Among the oldest living things in the world to-day are the Californian redwood trees. Such is the generally accepted verdict of naturalists (says Mr P. M. Schmook writing in American Forests). But. the fact is by no means so well known, he declares, that tne wood of fallen redwood trees may remain sound for hundreds of years. But. how, it may be asked, can this be proved, since California has not been inhabited by record-keeping civilised, man 'for more than three or four generations? The .answer is found in observa-

tions of certain - natural phenomena, which the writer thus describes:

"Eecently there was discovered in the forests of Humboldt county, California, a fallen giant 'of some past age upon "whose prone trunk there is growing a vertitable small, grove of living trees. The old .redwood is ten feet in diameter at the butt, and ISO feet long from its upturned root to the point where • the top of the tree broke off when it crashed to the ground. Growing out of the' drrt and debris collected o,n its top surface are eleven' living trees —nine western hemlocks and two Sitka spruces. The roots of these trees find tneir way to tke earth on each side of the massive trunk of redwood. The largest of the young* trees is, a Sitka spruce 61 inches in diameter a,nd about 170 years old., A hemlock 25 inches in diameter was 180 years old.

"Borings into the old redwood at different points showed its wood to be as sound and durable as the day it fell to earth, 200 or more years ago. A ring count gave its age as about 600 years when the fall occurred. ' '