DECIDUOUS TREES. 



321 



FIG. 103. 



strength of its lower arms, the trunk keeps on upwards, and forms 

 a squarish oblong head. 



In size the English elm, as recorded by reliable authorities, 

 exceeds any specimens of the American elms we have heard of. 

 In Warwickshire, at Combe Abbey, thirty years ago, stood a tree 

 two hundred years old, one hundred and fifty feet high, seventy- 

 four feet across its branches, with a trunk nine and a half feet in 

 diameter ! In Gloucestershire, at Doddington Park, was one ninety 

 feet high, one hundred and forty-nine feet across its branches, and 

 seven feet in diameter of trunk. In fact a height and breadth of 

 from ninety to one hundred feet is a common thing in the parks 

 of England, and there are many specimens from one hundred to 

 one hundred and twenty-five feet in height 



The growth of the tree is quite rapid, 

 fully equal in that respect to our own white 

 elm ; but its growth is so much more com- 

 pact, filling-in as it rises, instead of sending 

 out the long, curved, and rambling annual 

 shoots peculiar to the latter, that it has not 

 the appearance of growing so rapidly. The 

 comparative growth of the English, the 

 Scotch, and the American elms, ,may be 

 seen to great advantage near the Mall in 

 the New York Central Park. Fig. 103 illus- 

 trates the form and style of an English elm, 

 fifteen years after planting. 



As an ornamental tree the English elm partakes of the charac- 

 ter of the oaks in its branching ; but in the massing of its foliage, 

 and the play of lights and shadows on its head, it occupies a place 

 midway between the dense-leaved and sharply-stratified character 

 of the beech, and the nobler breaks of the oak and chestnut Gil- 

 pin, in analyzing its picturesque qualities, observes : " As a pic- 

 turesque tree the elm has not so distinct a character as the oak or 

 ash. It partakes so much of the oak, that when it is rough and 

 old it may easily, at a little distance, be mistaken for one. * 

 This defect, however, appears chiefly in the skeleton of the elm ; 

 in full foliage its character is more marked. No tree is better 

 21 



