Trees & Years

To celebrate the 300th Anniversary of Harvard University, potent graduates lent to Robinson Hall last week the most important collection of antiques New Englanders have seen for a generation. Also last week the Harvard Forest joined the festivities with an exhibition that a group of trained craftsmen has been preparing for the past five years. Sixteen illuminated models went on view near the famed glass flowers in the University Museum. Portrayed in miniature and exact detail were the history and proper care of a New England forest.

In 1931 Richard T. Fisher, first Director of the Harvard Forest at Petersham, Mass, evolved his scheme for teaching forestry through models. With some $30,000 from an anonymous donor, Director Fisher gave the contract to the professional model-making firm of Guernsey & Pitman. His instructions were that all the models should be of the same scale (half an inch to the foot), that the trees should not be random twigs and bits of painted sponge, but accurate reproductions which any naturalist could recognize.

Most interesting of the four-foot models on view last week was a group of seven showing the history of one hillside at Petersham, Mass. First appeared the primeval forest of 1700: white pines 150 ft. tall tower over the beeches, maples, hemlocks and oaks; only in a clearing caused, perhaps, by an Indian's fire is the weedy undergrowth of modern woods visible.

Thirty-three years later a settler has cleared a field in the forest, built a log house, and is grazing his cattle among the huge stumps of the white pines. Model No. 3 shows the same hillside in 1830, at the height of rural cultivation in New England: stone walls and white farm houses are everywhere; only a few straggling wood lots remain of the original forest.

In 1850 (Model No. 4) the same farm has been abandoned in the rush to the West: in the deserted fields tiny white pine seedlings are beginning to appear once more. In 1910 nature has restored the white pine forest: a portable sawmill has been set up and logs are being sledged through the snow to the railroad. By 1915 the hillside is once again bare and deserted. Fifteen years later, in Model No. 7, this twice cut-over hillside is again covered with trees but they are of a lean, weedy variety, fit only for cordwood unless drastic silviculture is practiced.

Twig, branch, and bole, each miniature tree in the Harvard Forest display was built up of strand upon strand of fine copper wire, then soldered and painted. Microscopic details like vines, pine needles and cones were etched out of paper-thin sheets of copper picked up with a magnet. Dentists' picks and scrapers were used for modeling tools. Making rocks was the most fun. A double fistful of whiting and glue was allowed to harden, then hurled full force against the studio wall. The fragments, painted in oils and dusted with dry color, were rocks.

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