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The Lives of Trees and the Lives of Men: February: Gypsies

Not only that, but it can even be told whether the insects worked on the body of the tree, as the wood-beetles do, or, like the children of the winged Gypsies, ate away the leaves. Think of being able to tell this -- years, even centuries, after both the leaves and the Gypsies have mouldered back into the dust!

In the years in which a tree's leaves are eaten away by the caterpillars the rings formed are unusually large on the trunk -- largest of all around the base -- and unusually small as you go up the tree, shrinking more rapidly toward the ends of the limbs and branches and most of all toward the ends of the top branches -- the bald-headedness and increased girth of advancing years, hurried on by illness.

Some of these records tell of a broken heart. I call it the "mystery of the broken heart", not just to be talking -- for that wouldn't do at all in books that are intended to tell you the truth about the endless wonders of Nature -- but because the name of these sorrows of the woods is just that, "heart-break", and since the cause of heart-break is still a matter of dispute, I used the word "mystery". A heart-break is a crack in the heart of the wood. Some think that it occurs in the standing tree as the result of heavy wind-storms. Others are of the opinion that it takes place when the tree crashes to the ground at the time it is felled for lumber. Whatever the cause, the defect in the wood is very serious. And yet the crack is often so narrow that it may be overlooked until after the wood has been worked up into manufactured products. A contributor to American Forests and Forest Life, published by the American Forestry Association, from whose article on the subject I take this information, has in his possession a section of an airplane wing-beam of Sitka Spruce which shows two of these breaks. The defect is very common in African Mahogany, and, in the case of Mahogany, a break unnoticed in the lumber will show up badly when it has been finished, and filler and stain are applied. The danger of heart-break also grows, so it seems, with the growing years, for the trees in which it is found are always large.

USEFUL HINTS FOR WOOD SCOUTS The forest regions of the Southern States, next to those of the Pacific coast, contain the largest proportion of our remaining lumber-supply, and yet a survey of the situation by the Department of Agriculture in 1924 showed that 97 per cent of the swamills will have used all their timber within ten years. While the bulk of the bottom-land timber tracts are on fertile soil which will, for the most part, be good for agriculture, there are also large areas, particularly in the uplands, which should be used for the permanent production of timber; and if you're a Southern boy, I look for you to be a great help in this work.