512 ULMUS AMERICANA. 
bat it splits more easily, and has less compactness, hardness, and strength, 
weighing, when perfectly dry, only thirty-three pounds to a cubic foot. The 
principal uses to which this timber is applied, are for making naves or hubs to 
wheels, for piles and foundation pieces to mills, canal locks, and for many other 
purposes where strength is required, and the work is cor. stantly buried in water 
or mnd. In the state of Maine, it is occasionally employed for the keels to 
vessels, for which purpose it is well adapted on account of its size. It is also 
employed for the swingle-trees of the carriages of great guns ; and in some parts 
>f the country, where more appropriate wood is not to be found, it is used for 
making ox-yokes, sleds, and other implements of husbandry. The bark, which 
is easily detached from the tree during eight months of the year, is sometimes 
used for making bast-mats, ropes, or withes, and for the bottoms of chairs. The 
wood, when dry, makes excellent fuel, and when burned, yields a brge propor- 
tion of ashes, which abound in alkaline salts. In Canada, and in the northern 
parts of the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York, a profit- 
able business is followed, especially in connection with clearing the forests, in pre- 
paring the salts of ley, for the manufacture of potash. The method generally adopted 
for procuring these salts, is detailed by Gosse, in his " Canadian Naturalist," as fol- 
lows : " One man, or more commonly two, go into the woods with holders, and a 
kettle or large caldron, and make a kind of camp, very much like a sugar camp. 
As winter is the usual season of operation, they often make a rude hut, or some 
little protection from the cold. They commence their business by felling such trees 
in the neighbourhood as suit their purpose; unless they have another object in 
view, the clearing of the land for cultivation, in which case, they cut, and burn 
indiscriminately, all the timber, except such as is saved for some peculiar pur- 
pose, such as cedar for fencing, &c. Having cut enough to begin, and divided it 
into logs, they pile them on one another by rolling them up an inclined plane, 
made by stakes from the lower logs to the ground. They then fill the interstices 
with dry brush, seasoned wood, &c, and set fire to the whole, taking care to 
have sufficient wood that will burn to consume that which would not burn with- 
out assistance. The ashes are collected from time to time, and put into a holder, 
shaped like an inverted cone, with the bottom open ; a little straw is placed over 
the hole at the bottom, a receiver placed beneath, and water poured on the ashes, 
the water filters through, and runs into the receiver, having extracted the alkali 
contained in the ashes, which stains it of a dark colour, like that of brandy. 
This is called lye, or ley, and is boiled down till the water is evaporated, and the 
alkali is left, which is the potash in a very impure state ; it is of a black colour, 
and is called salts of ley. This is sold to those who keep a potashery where it 
is cleansed from its impurities, I believe, by burning in a furnace, and becomes 
the potash of commerce." 
As a picturesque tree, the American elm, in woodland scenes, is rarely sur- 
passed by its forest brethren, in point of beauty, or of size. When standing in a 
wood, in a soil it loves, it naturally grows upright, and rises higher than a gen- 
erality of other trees ; and, when standing insulated and alone, in a newly-cleared 
field, with its top decayed and dead, save here and there a small tuft of leaves, 
stretching forth its naked and withered arms, it forms a striking emblem of the 
aged patriarch, who has outlived all his fellows, and is a stranger in the land 
which gave him birth, in whom death is already struggling with life, and will 
soon gain the ascendency. But when cultivated or grown in a pasture or in the 
lawn standing in lonely majesty, towering to the height of a hundred feet, with 
its lowermost limbs diverging outward and upwards, at a few yards above the 
ground, and afterwards dividing, and sub-dividing into numerous smaller ramifi- 
cations, and diffusing on all sides its pendulous branchlets, floating lightly in the 
air, it forms an object of dignity and grandeur. This tree, too, is among the first 
