BOSTON AND VICINITY. 41 



the old house. So plenty were peaches that the pigs 

 were turned into the orchard to eat up the surplus, and 

 this ground is still called the " old peach orchard." On 

 a portion of the Aspinwall estate, Mr. Augustus Aspin- 

 wall, a distinguished merchant and horticulturist, one 

 of the first board of counsellors of the Massachusetts 

 Horticultural Society, devoted a part of his time to 

 horticultural pursuits, erecting two extensive graperies. 

 He was eminently successful as a cultivator of the rose 

 of which he made frequent exhibitions. The old Aspin- 

 wall Elm, formerly so renowned, which stood at the 

 corner of the old house, was destroyed by the gale of 

 September, 1863. Dr. George B. Emerson, in his 

 report on the trees and shrubs of Massachusetts in the 

 edition of 1846, says : "The Aspinwall Elm in Brookline, 

 standing near the ancient house belonging to that 

 family, and which was known to be 181 years old in 

 1837, then measured 26 feet 5 inches at the ground, 

 or as near to it as the roots would allow us to measure, 

 and 16 feet 8 inches at five feet. The branches 

 extended 104 feet from southeast to northwest, and 95 

 from northeast to southwest," Some persons believe 

 that this old elm was coeval in age with the purchase 

 by Peter Aspinwall in 1650. The Aspinwall estate is 

 now the property of the Aspinwall Land Co. 1 



The most extensive and elegant estate in Brookline 

 is that of the venerable Ignatius Sargent, whose success 

 in grape culture forty years ago was so great that he ex- 

 hibited bunches of the Black Hamburg grape weighing 

 from four to six pounds. On these grounds is the 

 beautiful cottage of his son, Professor Charles S. Sargent, 

 on the site of the residence of the late Thomas Lee, 



the donor to the city of the Lethean statue on the 



* 



1 Letter of Hon. Wm. Aspinwall. 



