234 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



He says it may be propagated with more ease than any tree of 

 the forest, and the speedy returns of fuel it will make, lead him 

 to believe that its cultivation would become general, if its value 

 were duly appreciated. The wood of buttonwood trees grown 

 in moist situations burns very ill when green, but when it 

 grows on dry, sandy or rocky soils, it burns as freely, when 

 green, as oak cut at the same time. It is not, he thinks, equal 

 to the best kinds of fuel, but it is superior to chestnut, and makes 

 excellent charcoal. "It is a very valuable fuel for stoves. 

 Perhaps it may be ranked with the best kinds of soft maple." 

 If the question is, what kind of tree, on land of the same fertility, 

 will furnish fuel which will give the greatest amount of caloric, 

 he says, " I do not hesitate to declare my perfect conviction, 

 that it, (the buttonwood,) will furnish results much more favor- 

 able than any tree our country produces, except the locust on 

 dry soils." 



There are many remarkable trees of this kind in various 

 parts of the State. In 1839, I measured two in front of the 

 house of Elijah Bascom, Jr., in Hanover. The first was thir- 

 teen feet five inches in girth at the ground, and ten feet two 

 and a half inches at four and a half feet, with many large, 

 spreading branches, forming a broad top and an ample shade. 

 The other was twelve feet and two inches in girth at the ground, 

 and ten feet three inches at four and a half feet, with branches 

 larger but less spreading. In Rochester, one by the road-side 

 was eleven feet in circumference at four feet from the ground. 

 One in Roxbury, in a lot of J. Davis, nearly opposite the house 

 of E. Francis, Esq., measured, in 1837, fifteen feet six inches 

 at five and a half feet from the surface. An old hollow tree 

 near the little bridge over the south branch of the Nashua, in 

 Lancaster, bending over the water, was, in 1840, sixteen feet 

 ten inches at the ground, fifteen feet nine inches at three, and 

 fourteen feet nine inches at six feet. A second near it and vig- 

 orous, was, at the same heights respectively, sixteen feet eleven 

 inches, thirteen feet six inches, and thirteen feet four inches. A 

 third, an opening at the foot of which showed that it was exten- 

 sively decayed at the centre, was twenty-three feet two inches 

 at the ground, eighteen feet six inches at three feet, and eighteen 



