316 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



liarly fit. It is better fitted than any other tree to be made into 

 the pipes of aqueducts, as it requires no hoops ; and it has been 

 extensively employed for this purpose in the salt works at Syr- 

 acuse and the neighboring towns, in New York. It is of a 

 yellowish color when freshly cut. 



As an ornamental tree the Tupelo deserves more attention 

 than it has received. The brilliant color of the green of the 

 leaves, and the rich scarlet and crimson to which they turn 

 in autumn, at which season some of the trees are covered with 

 the bright blue fruit, make it always a beautiful object. 



I have been often struck with the appearance of extreme 

 vigor and healthfulness in the young trees — and some of the 

 old ones are amongst the noblest in the State. 



There is a tree of this kind at Cohasset, which was first 

 pointed out to me by the Rev. Dr. Greenwood, a man of taste, 

 who was a lover of trees, and which we rode twenty-five miles 

 expressly to see. It is richly worth a much longer journey. It 

 stands in a lone pasture, half a mile or more eastward from a 

 place called the Gulf. At the surface, just above the roots, it is 

 eleven feet in circumference, and it is nine feet and two inches, 

 up to the larger branches, which begin at about seven feet from 

 the ground. The trunk loses little of its diameter for near 

 twenty feet, although in that space, twenty large branches, and 

 many small ones put out. These are very large, and project 

 horizontally on every side, to a great distance, with an air of 

 mighty strength and power of resistance. The bark is cleft 

 into long prismatic ridges, nearly two inches high, which, on 

 the larger branches, are broken into hexagons, with an approach 

 to geometric regularity. It is of a mouse color, or purplish 

 ashy gray, with white clouds of pertusaria, and greenish and 

 bluish ash parmelias. The height is forty or fifty feet. The 

 average breadth of the head sixty-three feet, its extreme breadth 

 sixty-six. The whole head is of a broad, irregularly hemi- 

 spherical shape, flat at top. A striking circumstance in this tree 

 is the fact that the enormous horizontal branches push out as 

 boldly seaward as in any other direction, though the north-east 

 wind sweeps from the Bay in this quarter with a violence which 

 has bent almost every other tree towards the land. I have ob- 



