To Mt. Misery, counting tree rings.

November 13.

A white birch (Betula alba) west edge of Trillium Wood, two feet seven inches circumference at three feet.

On the Moore and Hosmer lot, cut in’52 (I think), west of railroad, south of Heywood’s meadow, an oak stump fifteen and a half inches in diameter, ninety three rings; another, white oak, fourteen and a half inches in diameter, ninety-four rings.

In the first case there were two stumps of same age, evidently sprouts from an older stock, they curving around it, but I observed only a slight hollow where apparently the old stump had been.

In the second case there was but one stump, but that rather concave on one side where there was a deep hollow in the earth.

In both of these cases the tenacious mould, covered slightly with a fine greenish lichen, appeared heaved up about where the old stump had been.

It was a good hundred years since that old stump was cut.

The inmost rings of the recent stumps were coarse, as with sprouts.

Near these apparently a black (?) oak, or maybe a chestnut (?), twenty inches in diameter and seventy four rings, but the centre was within four inches of the westerly side.

A white oak standing by the fence west of Spanish Brook dam on Morse’s lot, circumference six feet and two twelfths at three feet.

Near by a hornbeam a foot and a half in circumference at three feet.

J. Baker’s pitch pines south of upper wood-path north of his house abundantly confirm the rule of young white pines under pitch pines. That fine young white pine wood west of this is partly of these which were left when the pitch pines were cut.

Baker’s hill between farm and Pleasant Meadow, oak (apparently a black), diameter twenty-six, seventy one rings.

The stumps here were cut some five or six years ago and have fifty to sixty rings.

Commonly no sprouts from those of this age here.

On top of Mt. Misery, looked again at those old stumps (of the 8th).

There are three or four quite plain, just showing themselves above the surface, with rounded, flaky, decaying and crumbling edge, close to the recent stump of the shoot or shoots which sprang from them and which were cut last winter.

One of these recent stumps, counted to-night, gives sixty years, but the first two or three are uncertain.

Hence this old stump is as old as the century.

There are several perfectly dry and exposed stumps on bare rocky shelves, or else lying on rocks on their sides, quite well preserved and showing the marks of the axe, which I have but little doubt are of the same age , preserved by being tipped out of the earth many years ago .

Am surprised at the very slow growth of some hickory (stumps) along the wall on the top of this hill, — so fine I did not count quite accurately.

One was 10 inches in diameter with 104 rings
               6 1/2 "                        about 115
             14 1/2 "                                   84  
             11 3/4 "                                 121 


I think that the oak stumps have lasted unusually long on this hill, on account of their having originally grown slowly here and since been so much exposed to the light and air over and amid the rocks.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 13, 1860

A white birch two feet seven inches circumference at three feet. See September 2, 1857 ("The third, or largest, yellow birch, at the cellar, was, at three feet from the ground . . . ten feet nine inches in circumference"); July 24, 1857 ("I measured a canoe birch, five and a half feet in circumference at two and a half from the ground.")

J. Baker’s pitch pines south of upper wood-path north of his house abundantly confirm the rule of young white pines under pitch pines. See April 28, 1856 ("Let me look at the site of some thick pine woods. . .and see what has sprung up. . ."); May 10, 1856 ("Where the pitch pines were cut some years ago on Thrush Alley, I now see birches, oaks, and pitch and white pines."); October 29, 1860 ("Henry Shattuck’s is a new pitch pine wood, say thirty years old. . . .It is a remarkable proof of my theory, for it contains thousands of little white pines but scarcely one little pitch pine. It is also well stocked with minute oak seedlings."); ; November 19, 1869 ("My rule of small white pines under pitch pines is so true of E. Hoar's land that he very easily got a hundred white pines there to set by his house. "); November 26, 1860 (" But where did the pitch pines stand originally? Who cleared the land for its seedlings to spring up in? Who knows but the fires or clearings of the Indians may have to do with the presence of these trees there?"); November 29, 1860 ("The small pitch pine grove above the western Fair Haven spring fully proves my theory of white pines in pitch pine. . . Young white pines are rapidly spreading up Fair Haven Hill-side, though the nearest seed- bearing white pines are across the river, thirty to sixty rods off. ")