FOREST TREES. 21 



hundred and twenty-four feet, covering a surface of over seven 

 thousand five hundred square feet." " The Washington Elm, in 

 Cambridge — so called because beneath its shade, or near it, Gen- 

 eral Washington is said to have first drawn his sword on taking 

 the command of the American army — measured, in 1842, fifteen 

 feet two inches at one foot, thirteen feet two at three feet from 

 the ground. The celebrated Whitfield preached under the shade 

 of this tree in 1744." " Two Elms were set out by the Indians 

 in front of the house of the Rev. Oliver Peabody, who succeeded, 

 in 1722, to the venerable Eliot, the Indian apostle, in the same 

 truly Christian ministry, in Natick," Massachusetts. " This vol- 

 untary offering of the grateful savages they called Trees of Peace." 



There is an Elm standing in front of Mr. J. Chickering's house, 

 AYestford, Massachusetts, which I recently measured eighteen 

 inches from the ground. Its circumference was twenty feet, and 

 its spurs were not prominent, as will be inferred from the fact that 

 at four feet from the ground it measured eighteen feet in circum- 

 ference. Seven and a half feet from the ground it divides into 

 two branches, each of itself a very large trunk, the largest of 

 which would measure three feet and a half in diameter. Seven 

 or eight feet from the first division, at short intervals, the main 

 branch, which grew on the west side next the house, divides into 

 eight more branches, all nearly equal in size, and averaging a 

 circumference of four and a half feet. About forty feet from the 

 base of the tree these eight branches subdivide into twenty- 

 other branches, and so on indefinitely to the terminate 

 The east main branch was divided into lour principals, equal in 

 size to the corresponding ones en the other Bide, and were .subdi- 

 vided also in the same manner as the one de 



In height it is about seventy feet, vase-topped, with a pendent 

 border. The extent of the spreading branches, northwest and 

 southeast, was one hundred and live feel ; those corresponding 

 with the exact opposite points of the compass extended ninety-five 



