TREES IN THE GARDEN 249 



it grows to a great height, with a clean straight stem, 

 and not a great spread of branches, as in the grand 

 oaks at Bagot's Park, in Staffordshire, and if it would 

 always grow like that it might be admitted into any 

 garden, but the general habit is wide-spreading, and I 

 have seen an oak at Southgate, near London, of very 

 moderate height, but the branches cover a circle of 

 which the diameter is over 120 ft. There are very 

 few gardens that could admit such a tree. 



On no account should an elm be admitted in or near 

 a small garden, though it is hard to exclude a tree 

 which so rapidly takes a beautiful shape, and which in 

 the late autumn puts on such golden tints. But pro- 

 bably no tree takes possession of a large extent of 

 ground so rapidly as this Italian stranger, for it is not 

 a true native. It sends up suckers at a considerable 

 distance from the parent tree, and these, if let alone, 

 soon become trees. About forty years ago a Scotch 

 forester surveyed a part of South Devon to report on 

 the growth of hedgerow timber, and he reported that 

 in the parish of Clyst St. George the hedgerow elms 

 occupied three-quarters of the parish, for though only, 

 or chiefly, in the hedgerows, their roots extended so far 

 into the fields that they met and even overlapped 

 in the middle of the fields, so that only one-quarter of 

 the parish could be considered free from the elm roots. 



