226 THE MOUNTAIN. 



but it is evidently most generally the result of the germina- 

 tion of single seeds, some of them exhibiting, however, the 

 appearance of two or three seeds having germinated in 

 contact. The philosophy of the growth of this particular 

 form is, apparently, that the different species of trees form- 

 ing these groves have started from the earth's surface 

 at the same time, but somewhat scattered, and, when the 

 first branches of the infant pine were developed, the sur- 

 rounding growth prevented a lateral expansion of the 

 limbs, each of the primitive branches afterwards becoming 

 a separate trunk or tree, and projecting itself upward, as the 

 pine does in other crowded forests. From the point of 

 separation at the forks, the limbs, each a noble tree itself, 

 spring together, frequently of one size, like an immense 

 chandelier, and rise in the air, the whole bundle of stems 

 being supported and nourished by one large root-base. 

 Many of these forked-pine trees have quite a celebrity, 

 and have attained the character of individuals, and are 

 visited as curiosities of the mountain. The lumber of the 

 white pine is of great value, and forms one of the chief 

 staples of the mountain. 



ULMUS. Along the flats of some of the streams the elm 

 often attains to a great size, sometimes dividing into regu- 

 lar clumps of thin trunks, which bend outward from the 

 centre, the whole summit being flat, and the tree of the 

 shape of an inverted bell. Three species of the genus Ulmus 

 grow on the mountain, viz., the "Americana," the "fulva," 

 and "racemosa." They seek, as elsewhere, with their cha- 

 racteristic instinct, the moist flats and neighborhood of 

 streams. Many of these elms are of enormous size, and of 

 exceedingly fantastic and eccentric forms, appearing to 

 have, by some sylvan sorcery, been led to violate all 

 sober and common-sense laws of tree-building, and to have 

 grown by freaks of the vegetative forces into "monsters 

 of such frightful mien," that, to be remembered, "need but 

 to be seen."* To have introduced the photographic tran- 



* An exact and perfectly-elaborated portrait of an elm of rare and 

 grotesque form and immense proportions Las been painted for the 



