Thoreau writes in his journal:
P.M.—To Fair Haven Hill.
On what was Stow’s lot, southwest the Boiling Spring, adjacent to Wheeler’s field, I count the rings of four oak stumps which are from eighteen to twenty-two inches in diameter. They are all about 120, and the oaks are evidently all from the seed. This was both a pine and oak wood, and I suspect that about one hundred and twenty years [ago] pines were cut or burned or blown down or decayed there and these oaks succeeded . . .
