TALKS ON TREES 145 



The West Springfield elm and one upon North- 

 ampton meadows belong also to the first class of 

 trees. 



There is a noble old wreck of an elm at Hatfield, 

 which used to spread its claws out over a cir- 

 cumference of thirty-five feet or more before 

 they covered the foot of its bole up with earth. 

 This is the American elm most like an oak of 

 any I have ever seen. 



What makes a first-class elm? Why, size, in the 

 first place, and chiefly. Anything over twenty feet 

 of clear girth, five feet above the ground and with a 

 spread of branches a hundred feet across, may claim 

 that title, according to my scale. All of them, with 

 the questionable exception of the Springfield tree 

 above referred to, stop, so far as my experience goes, 

 at about twenty-two or twenty-three feet of girth 

 and a hundred and twenty of spread. 



Elms of the second class, generally ranging from 

 fourteen to eighteen feet, are comparatively com- 

 mon. The queen of them all is that glorious tree 

 near one of the churches in Springfield. Beautiful 

 and stately she is beyond all praise. The "great 

 tree" on Boston common comes in the second rank, 

 as does the one at Cohasset, which used to have, and 

 probably has still, a head as round as an apple- 

 tree, and that at Newburyport, with scores of others 

 which might be mentioned. These last two have, 



