Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 22.djvu/216

204 anatomy, of embryology, and of geographical distribution would be enough to satisfy us that the living things known to us are the divergent descendants of more generalized ancestors, and that their relationships can be most exactly expressed by a system of converging lines, which meet and form larger branches to represent the extinct ancestors from which our divergent species are descended. The evidence is circumstantial, and only leads to general conclusions, and a complete series of fossil forms is the only absolute proof which we could have; but, in the absence of this proof, the conclusions drawn from the study of living animals are rendered extremely probable by the fact that the fossil members of the more modern groups of animals, such as the mammals and birds, are just such forms as the evidence from other sources leads us to expect, and the attempt to read and interpret such records as we have, and to trace the history of life with as much accuracy as possible, is therefore perfectly legitimate, and may fairly claim the attention of the morphologist.



RE the concentric rings of a tree a reliable record of its age in years? Such has been the conception—in fact, the undisputed knowledge—of the world, for all time past. I have no recollection of ever having seen or heard the authority of this record disputed till Désiré Charnay, in his "Ruins of Central America," said, when speaking of the age of the ruins as proved by such a record: "Unfortunately for the argument, it is altogether fallacious and proves nothing. I have put the evidence to a test. On examining a slice of wood of a shrub that I knew as a fact was only eighteen months old, I found that it had eighteen concentric rings. I thought it was an anomaly, but, in order to convince myself, I experimented upon trees of all kinds and sizes, and invariably found the like result produced in very nearly like proportions."

M. Charnay's statement was, in my estimation, rather loose, and lacking in the proof of his absolute knowledge of the age of the trees examined; and again, so far as applicable to the case, was only so in a tropical climate, where the conditions were entirely different from those surrounding us in a higher latitude, and altogether raised but little doubt on the subject.

In April of 1871 I planted a quantity of the seed of the common red maple (Acer rubrum). In transplanting, in 1873, they were placed too near each other, and it has become necessary to cut a part 