emitting 



To the sky half-way, and the friendless crow 

 Will nest in my fork no more. 



So sorrow you not if I cease to soar, 



And am sundered by saw and bill: 

 Rather hope that, like me, when you're green no 

 more, 



You may comfort your kindred still. 



These thoughts are certainly very comforting 

 when one is pained by the sight of the living dis- 

 solution of a vegetable monarch in all its apparent 

 undecayed health and strength, and at the summit 

 of its glory. 



In trying to explain to myself the reason of this 

 seemingly unaccountable dismemberment of very 

 old elms, I notice that the lower and heavier 

 branches, probably by reason of their accretion 

 of bulk, very gradually assume an increasingly 

 horizontal position, thus unfitting them more and 

 more to bear the strain of their own weight, 

 which, as their angle becomes more obtuse in re- 

 lation to the parent stem, eventually compasses 

 their collapse. No doubt the fiber also loses elas- 

 ticity and becomes more brittle with age. Some 

 of the lower branches of another, my favorite, 



