20 FOREST LIFE AND 



Few trees of other species are to "be found standing near the 

 abodes of civilized life which have attained the vast dimensions 

 of the Elm. "Whatever may have been the peculiar properties of 

 other trees, they have disappeared. Upturned by the passing 

 hurricane, or leveled by the woodman's ax, they have passed 

 away, while the Elm stands at our doors associated with the his- 

 tory and memory of the different generations which, like its au- 

 tumnal sheddings, have long time ago mingled with the dust. 



The Elm grows with great rapidity, which, in addition to its 

 beauty as an ornament, secures for it the favor of man. "I once 

 heard," says the author of Massachusetts Reports, &c, an old 

 man, standing under the shade of a tree nearly two feet in di- 

 ameter, which towered above all around it, say, " This tree, after 

 I had been many years successful in business, and in a change 

 of fortune had retired to this farm, with a little that remained, 

 I stuck into the ground after I had used it as a stick in a ride 

 of eight miles from P." 



" From its having been so long a favorite, it has been more fre- 

 quently spared, and oftener transplanted than any other tree. 

 There are, in all parts of the state, many fine old trees standing. " 

 " In Springfield, in a field a few rods north of the hotel, is an Elm 

 which was twenty-five feet and nine inches in circumference at 

 three feet from the ground." The great Elm on Boston Common 

 measures, at the same distance from the ground, seventeen feet 

 eleven inches in circumference. " It is said to have been planted 

 about the year 1670, by Captain Daniel Henchman, an ancestor 

 of Governor Hancock. It is, therefore, more than one hundred 

 and seventy-five years old." " There is an Elm in Hatfield, near 

 the town-house, which measures at the ground forty-one feet ; at 

 three and one half feet from the ground it measures twenty-seven 

 feet in circumference. The smallest place in the trunk is seven 

 feet four inches in diameter. The top spreads over an area of 

 one hundred and eight feet in diameter, making a circle of three 



