ISO ULMUS. 



although upon soil in which it may never ultimately arrive 

 at any respectable size, it has what Matthew, in his trea- 

 tise upon naval timber, calls " a peculiar, fan-like, sloping- 

 to-one-side spread of branch," giving it at all ages a wide- 

 spreading head, which, rising above its slower growing- 

 neighbours, not only lashes them with severity, but de- 

 prives them of their due share of light and air, and soon 

 suffocates or reduces them to a weak, unhealthy state, 

 from which, extermination of their enemy by the free use 

 of the axe is the only chance of recovering them. This 

 we have learnt from experience, for in some extensive 

 plantations, executed by contract or at so much per acre, 

 about twenty-eight years ago, the Wych Elm was intro- 

 duced to excess, and in these plantations the oaks and 

 other trees have only been preserved and kept in healthy 

 condition, by unremitting attention to the timely thinning 

 out of their unruly neighbours.* 



The only situations in which the Wych Elm can be 

 planted in mass, or in numbers together, as a principal 

 crop with a view to profit, appear to be rich banks, 

 such as those of rivers, deep dells, Sec, too steep for agri- 

 cultural operations ; for we hold that if land, such as 

 this Elm requires to bring it to perfection, can be sub- 

 jected to the plough, it would under cultivation pay the 

 proprietor a much higher interest than any timber that 

 could be grown. In such localities the Elms should be 

 planted at distances of six or eight feet apart, otherwise 

 they very soon interfere with and injure each other ; 

 a thin sprinkling of larch, pine, or birch might be intro- 

 duced to vary the effect, and these would, at the periods 



* Planters seem now to have discovered the error of introducing the Wych 

 Elm so freely into mixed plantations, and by many it is interdicted ; in conse- 

 quence it is becoming comparatively scarce in the sale nurseries. 



