AMERICAN FOREST TREES 381 



about 2,500,000 square miles. A few other trees have ranges as large, 

 but none much exceed it. It covers so much of America, and is so 

 important in many parts of its range, that it is clearly the leading elm in 

 this country. It is entitled to first place among elms for other reasons. 



It is not easy to give any sure features or characteristics by which 

 the layman may always distinguish this elm from others with which it is 

 associated ; however, by carefully observing certain features, the identity 

 of white elm is generally easy to establish. 



The leaves have teeth along the margins like beech and birch. 

 They have straight primary veins running from the midrib to the points 

 of the teeth. Before falling fn autumn the leaves turn yellow. The 

 foliage is not very thick, and most of it is near the ends of the limbs. 

 The bloom comes early in the spring, ahead of the leaves, and the seeds 

 are ripe and ready for flight before the leaves are grown. Sometimes 

 the seeds are ripe almost before the leaves are out of the buds. The 

 seeds are oblong, and about the size of a small lentil. The wing entirely 

 surrounds the seed, and is about half an inch long. The flight of elm 

 seeds is an interesting phenomenon. The individual seeds are so small 

 that they are not easily seen as they sail away from the tall tree top but 

 when they go in swarms, in fitful puffs of wind, they are not hard to see. 

 It is chiefly by their fruits that they are known, that is, by the multi- 

 tudes of seedlings that appear a few weeks later. If one seedling elm in 

 a thousand should reach maturity, there would be little besides elms in 

 the whole country. They spring up by highways and hedges, in gutters, 

 fields, and even between cobbles and bricks of paved streets ; but in a 

 few days they have crowded one another to death, or have perished from 

 other causes, and those which manage to live to maturity do not much 

 more than make up for old trees which perish from natural causes. 



The botanist Michaux pronounced the white elm "the most magni- 

 ficent vegetable of the temperate zone." A number of trees are larger, 

 though this reaches great size. Sargent sets the limit of the tree at 120 

 feet high and eleven feet in trunk diameter. That size is, of course, 

 unusual, but it has been surpassed at least in height. A tree in Jefferson 

 county, Pennsylvania, was 140 feet high, and although forest grown, it 

 had a spread of crown of seventy-six feet. It was sent to the sawmill 

 where it made 8,820 feet of lumber. That trunk was only five feet in 

 diameter. 



Some of the finest forest grown elms in this country have been cut 

 in Michigan. Their trunks were as tall, straight, and shapely as yellow 

 poplars, and their crowns surpassed those of poplars. It was formerly 

 not unusual for sawlogs to be cut from elm limbs which branched from 

 the trunk fifty or more feet from the ground. The best of the forest 



