UNCLE PAUL had just cut down a pear-tree in the garden. The tree was old, its trunk ravaged by worms, and for several years it had not borne any fruit. It was to be replaced by another. The children found their Uncle Paul seated on the trunk of the pear-tree. He was looking attentively at something. “One, two, three, four, five,” said he, tapping with his finger upon the cross-section of the felled tree. What was he counting?

“Come quick,” he called, “come; the pear-tree is waiting to tell you its story. It seems to have some curious things to tell you.”

The children burst out laughing.

“And what does the old pear-tree wish to tell us?” asked Jules.

“Look here, at the cut which I was careful to make very clean with the ax. Don’t you see some rings in the wood, rings which begin around the marrow and keep getting larger and larger until they reach the bark?”

“I see them,” Jules replied; “they are rings fitted one inside another.”

“It looks a little like the circles that come just after throwing a stone into the water,” remarked Claire.

“I see them too by looking closely,” chimed in Emile.

“I must tell you,” continued Uncle Paul, “that those circles are called annual layers. Why annual, if you please? Because one is formed every year; one only, understand, neither more nor less. The learned who spend their lives studying plants, and who are called botanists, tell us that no doubt is possible on that point. From the moment the little tree springs from the seed to the time when the old tree dies, every year there is formed a ring, a layer of wood. This understood, let us count the layers of our pear-tree.”

Uncle Paul took a pin to guide his counting; Emile, Jules, and Claire looked on attentively. One, two, three, four, five—They counted thus up to forty-five, from the marrow to the bark.

“The trunk has forty-five layers ............