ars have been
known to show an annual increase of half to three-quarters of an
inch thus measured. Others have grown so slowly that only with a
microscope can the annual rings be counted. I fancy my patriarch
as belonging to their lodge, nor would I be surprised to learn
that when its first plume appeared above the ledges Indian tepees
were the only human habitations of the region.

The red cedar seems to have a power to fix itself on a rough ledge
and grow there year after year and indeed century after century,
that is far greater than that of any other tree. You will find
them on the rocks looking seaward along much of our New England
coast, some of them the same trees known in the same spots since
the days of the earliest settlers, gnarled, stunted and storm-beaten,
but evergreen, and glowing with a little of the gold of spring
each year just the same, typical, it always seems to me,
of all that is hardy and defiant in the New England character.
I know such cedars on the ledges which jut southerly from
the edge of the tiny plateau which is the top of Blue Hill
and you may find them on many other ledges of the range. I believe
these same trees were there when Captain John Smith first sighted
the "Cheviot Hills" from the ship which brought him into
Massachusetts Bay.

Far different from these are the trees which grow in the sheltered
pastures where the soil is good. None of these get the round head
of my ancient friend of the ledgy hill. Instead they grow a
single, straight shaft, ten, twenty, or even thirty feet tall,
with many small limbs curving upward and close pressed toward the
trunk, making a round, tapering column of living green trees of
singular dignity and beauty that look as if carefully smoothed up
with the gardener's shears. All the year the pasture cedars are
beautiful, and it is hard to say whether they are at their best in
the spring glow of staminate delight or now when their bronze
robes bear the round, exquisitely blue berries which are really
cones. I have an idea the birds like them best now. The robins,
the cedar-birds, and a host of others eat these berries gladly,
and fly far with them, planting the seeds as they go. They find
shelter in the close drawn blanket of evergreen foliage which the
trees seem to wrap about them to keep out the cold and they fill
the pasture with flitting wings all the month. If the season is
mild and the blue fruit of the cedars very plentiful the birds are
likel