184 Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts. 



much the aspect of an elm, that it was, almost universally, taken for one. 

 I was informed that a still larger tree of the same kind had formerly grown 

 near it. Within two years, this noble tree has fallen, like its brother, be- 

 fore the axe of improvement.'" pp. 309, 310. 



Here is a description of a picturesque tree, and an instance 

 of enthusiasm not, happily, rare among lovers of plants : — 



" There is a tree of this kind at Cohasset, which was first pointed out to 

 me by the Rev. Dr. Greenwood, a man of taste, who was a lover of trees, 

 and which we rode twenty-five miles expressly to see. It is richly worth 

 a much longer journey. It stands in a lone pasture, half a mile or more 

 eastward from a place called the Gulf. At the surface, just above the roots, 

 it is eleven feet in circumference, and it is nine feet and two inches, up to 

 the larger branches, which begin at about seven feet from the ground. The 

 trunk loses little of its diameter for near twenty feet, although, in that space, 

 twenty large branches, and many small ones, put out. These are very 

 large, and project horizontally on every side, to a great distance, with an 

 air of mighty strength and power of resistance. The bark is cleft into 

 long prismatic ridges, nearly two inches high, which, on the larger branches, 

 are broken into hexagons, with an approach to geometric regularity. It is 

 of a mouse color, or purplish ashy gray, with white clouds of pertusaria, 

 and greenish and bluish ash parmelias. The height is forty or fifty feet ; 

 the average breadth of the head sixty-three feet, its extreme breadth sixty- 

 six. The whole head is of a broad, irregularly hemispherical shape, flat at top. 

 A striking circumstance in this tree is the fact that the enormous horizontal 

 branches push out as boldly seaward as in any other direction, though the 

 north-east wind sweeps from the Bay in this quarter with a violence which 

 has bent almost every other tree towards the land. I have observed many 

 other instances of the vigor with which the tupelo stands out against the 

 sea breeze." pp. 316, 317. 



A picturesque ruin of a White Oak, * we are told, 



" Is standing in Brighton, where the road called Nonantum Street 

 crosses that from Boston to Newton Corner. At the surface of the 

 ground, it measures, this first of October, 1845, twenty-five feet and 

 nine inches in circumference ; at three feet, it is twenty-two feet four 

 inches ; at six feet, fifteen feet two inches. It tapers gradually to 

 the height of about twenty-five feet, where the slump of its ancient 

 top is visible, below which point four or five pretty large branches are thrown 

 out, which rise twenty or thirty feet higher. Below, the places of many 

 former limbs are covered over by immense gnarled and bossed protuber- 



* [This old specimen has always commanded our admiration : we have known it 

 for nearly thirty years, and it seems now as it did when we first saw it.]— Ed. 



