832 AMERICAN FOREST-TREES. 
dred and forty-seven feet in height, and adds: “A few years 
since, such trees were in great numbers along the northern 
parts of Connecticut River.” In another letter, he speaks of 
the white pine as “frequently six feet in diameter, and two 
hundred and fifty feet in height,” and states that a pine had 
been cut in Lancaster, New Hampshire, which measured two 
hundred and sixty-four feet. Emerson wrote in 1846: “ Fifty 
years ago, several trees growing on rather dry land in Bland- 
ford, Massachusetts, measured, after they were felled, two hun- 
dred and twenty-three feet.” All these trees are surpassed by 
a pine felled at Hanover, New Hampshire, about a hundred 
years ago, and described as measuring two hundred and seyenty- 
four feet.* These descriptions, it will be noticed, apply to 
trees cut from seventy to one hundred and forty years since. 
Persons, whom observation has rendered familiar with the 
present character of the American forest, will be struck with 
the smallness of the diameter which Dr. Williams and Dr. 
Dwight ascribe to trees of such extraordinary height. Indi- 
viduals of the several species mentioned in Dr. Williams’s table 
are now hardly to be found in the same climate, exceeding 
one-half or at most two-thirds of the height which he assigns 
to them; but, except in the case of the oak and the pine, the 
diameter stated by him would not be thought very extraordi- 
nary in trees of far less height, now standing. Even in the 
species I have excepted, those diameters, with half the heights 
of Dr. Williams, might perhaps be paralleled at the present 
time ; and many elms, transplanted, at a diameter of six inches, 
within the memory of persons still living, measure four and 
sometimes even five feet through. For this change in the 
growth of forest-trees there are two reasons: the one is, that 
the great commercial value of the pine and the oak have caused 
the destruction of all the best—that is, the tallest and straight- 
est—specimens of both; the other, that the thinning of the 
* WinuiAMs, History of Vermont, ii., p. 53. Dwieur’s Travels, iv., p. 21, 
and iii, p. 36. Emmerson, Z’rees of Massachusetts, p. 61. Parisn, Life of 
President Wheelock, p. 56. 
