TREES 253 



of university campuses and civic squares. The elm is 

 essentially a self-sufficient tree. It does not thrive in 

 groves. It has a standard type of its own, and it either 

 attains this type or is lost to view. Sometimes, in a 

 wild state, it attains it by killing out its immediate com- 

 petitors, but more often it is killed out by them, and 

 the elm which comes to maturity is the one which has 

 lodged in a favoured spot where there is no com- 

 petition, such as a river meadow, where the spring fresh- 

 ets have dropped the seed on fertile soil and the roots 

 can get down to water. 



We all know the type the noble trunk of massive 

 girth, tapering very gradually upward to the first spring 

 of branches, and then dissolving in those branches as a 

 water jet might dissolve in many upward and out-curv- 

 ing streams, till the whole is lost in the spray of the fo- 

 liage. Like many trees which grow alone, it develops an 

 exquisite symmetry, but with the elm this symmetry is 

 not only one of general contour but of individual limbs. 

 Not only is the silhouette symmetrical, but the skeleton, 

 branch balancing branch. That is what gives it its re- 

 markable fitness to comport with architectural lines, 

 with geometrically designed vistas. It has a formal 

 structure, and a consequent dignity, which make it the 

 logical shade for a village street, a chapel, a library, the 

 scholarly procession in cap and gown. Add to that 

 dignity its arched and airy lightness and its splendid 

 size, and you have the king of urban trees. 



