58 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1893. 



charm in its picturesqueness, and the individual tree contributing 

 most to this end is the hemlock. Life on the mountain-side seems 

 congenial to it, for it stands erect through storm and wind, and when 

 death comes at last it occupies its upright position for decades and 

 generations. It is the prevailing opinion with Princeton people that 

 there are hemlock trees on the mountain, still erect, that have been 

 dead for 100 years. 



Not the least of the many pleasant experiences of the searcher 

 after large or notable trees are the " finds" he makes when the least 

 expected. One who makes a practical study of forestry does not 

 have to serve a long apprenticeship, nor become an adept in arbor- 

 culture, before receiving returns in happy surprises as the results of 

 his investigations and observations. He, on the very threshold of 

 his pursuits in this line, begins to discern new features and character- 

 istics in trees, which heretofore were wholly unobserved and unknown 

 to him, although always in existence. So also if he sets heart and 

 mind upon finding some especially large tree, of some particular 

 species or variety, it oftenest happens that he finds this when least 

 expected, and in a wholly unlooked for place. During the summer 

 and fall of 1891, I was particularly desirous of finding some sassa- 

 fras tree of abnormal size, for as you know, the sassafras is rarely 

 more than a shrub. The summer and autumn in question came and 

 went, and my search for a big sassafras tree was without avail. 

 Winter came, and one morning as I was walking along Elm Street I 

 happened to glance aside, and there, not three feet from the side- 

 walk, I found the long-looked for object of my search ; the largest 

 sassafras tree I had ever seen. A measurement of this tree showed 

 its height to be forty-seven feet, and its girth at a foot from the 

 ground four feet. The tree is on the estate No. 25 Elm Street. One 

 late spring day, while strolling along a highway leading from Stur- 

 bridge to Brookfleld, I cast my eye over an adjoining field and saw a 

 great mass of white flowers peering above the surrounding alders. 

 From my position in the road the flowers resembled those of the dog- 

 wood (I mean the cormis florida^ not the poison sumac), but as the 

 apparent size of the tree was much greater than any dogwood I had 

 ever seen, I quickly concluded that it could not be this tree. How- 

 ever, a visit to the tree showed that it was a genuine dogwood, and a 

 surprising "find." Its girth at two feet from the ground was four 

 feet, eight inches, and its approximate height between thirty-five and 

 forty feet. 



Near a body of stagnant water, commonly denominated as a mud 



