320 OUR WOODLAND TREES. 
lopping off its lower branches, which are replaced 
by a clustering array of small boughs or twigs 
that, with their accompaniment of summer 
foliage, enshroud the Elm-trunk, whilst the Tree- 
head alone, above the reach of the wood-lopper, 
spreads out against the sky its wealth of green 
beauty. Unspoilt, however, by the ungainly work 
of the pruner, the Elm is a noble Tree, and were 
' it undisfigured by the lopping agriculturist, would 
make sylvan splendour in our monotonous hedge- 
banks, and bosky avenues, rich in beauty, of the 
dry and dusty roadways, dividing domain of corn- 
land from domain of cornland. Yet in many a 
spot in rural England Ulmus campestris is still 
left to us in the pride of its glory, forming lofty 
arcades of rare beauty, with a grandeur in the 
upward sweep and gradual spread of its noble 
branches, that can only be understood by those 
who have seen this stately inhabitant of our 
woodlands in its full glory. The Crawley Elm, 
rising seventy feet high, with a girth of sixty one 
feet at the ground; the Elm at Sion House rising 
a hundred feet; the Elm at Longleat, and the one 
at Croft Castle, Herefordshire, both reaching a 
