OLD ELM ON BOSTON COMMON. 85 



ntion for beautiful trees, and though he had been obliged to cut 

 down a great many, he never laid the axe to one without a pang 

 of regret. Mr. Hovey alluded to the beautiful avenues of elms 

 planted in Cambridge before the revolution by Mr, Inman, under 

 which he had often reclined in a summer's day, and said that he 

 had a tree on his own grounds for which he felt a great veneration. 

 It was one of the only two living seedlings of the Charter Oak, 

 and was brought to him forty years ago by the late Dr. E. W. 

 Bull, of Hartford, in his carpet bag. If this veteran elm that has 

 just fallen, could only speak of all that it has witnessed for two 

 hundred or more years, what a record it would give ! The memo- 

 ries which its fall brought before him were more than he could 

 utter. 



Mr. "Wilder said that there was a young tree growing very near 

 the roots of the great elm, and that it would be desirable to ascer- 

 tain whether it was a seedling or a sucker. He suggested the pro- 

 priety of planting, on this centennial year, a successor to the old 

 tree. 



Mr. Hovey thought it would be well to procure a portion of the 

 old tree to make a chair for the president of the Society. 



Ilervey Davis said he had been informed by the City Forester 

 that the young tree mentioned by Mr. Wilder is a sucker. 



James Cruickshanks said that, though not to the manor born, 

 he had a great regard for anj'^thing associated, like this old tree, 

 with the history of the country. He lived in Hartford for three 

 years and he now had a highly prized relic of the Charter Oak, 

 and it was a remarkable coincidence that during the week when 

 it was blown down, an oak in which the Scottish hero, Sir Wil- 

 liam Wallace, had taken refuge, was also prostrated. 



Dr. Waters said that the development of a tree depends some- 

 what on the length of the season. When a tree gets so large that 

 the sap has a great way to travel, the leaves at the ends of the 

 branches do not, in a short season, have time to perfect by their 

 absorbed and elaborated carbon a ground connection for the next 

 year's sap to flow up through, so that no sap goes to those parts 

 which have not had made for them such a connection, and conse- 

 quently they perish. He thought that if this old tree had been 

 headed in it might have endured for a century longer. Each 

 living bud on a tree is the result of forces of the previous year, 

 and is a possible tree. If the long, dying limbs are cut back to 



