D E CIDUO us 'TBEES. 317 



of a circle till they bend at maturity almost to the earth with their 

 verdant tips. 



That master of happy characterization, the Rev. Henry Ward 

 Beecher, in " Norwood," makes the following beautiful allusions to 

 the weeping elm ■, — ^^' No town can fail of beauty, though its walks 

 were gutters, and its houses hovels, if venerable trees make mag- 

 nificent colonnades along its streets. Of all trees, no other unites, 

 in the same degree, majesty and beauty, grace and grandeur, as the 

 American elm. Known from north to south, through a range of 

 twelve hundred miles, and from the Atlantic to the head-waters 

 which flow into the western side of the Mississippi, yet, in New 

 England the elm is found in its greatest size and beauty, fully justi- 

 fying Michaux' commendation of it to European cultivators, as ' the' 

 most magnificent vegetable of the temperate zone.' " * * * 

 " Their towering trunks, whose massiveness well symbolizes Puri- 

 tan inflexibility; their overarching tops, facile, wind-borne and 

 elastic, hint the endless plasticity and adaptableness of this people ; 

 and both united, form a type of all true manhood, broad at the 

 root, firm in the trunk, and yielding at the top, yet returning again 

 after every impulse into position and symmetry. What if they 

 were sheered away from village and farm-house ? Who would 

 know the land 'i Farm-houses that now stop the tourist and the 

 artist, would stand forth bare and homely ; and villages that 

 coquette with beauty through green leaves, would shine white and 

 ghastly as sepulchres. Let any one imagine Conway or Lancaster 

 without elms ! Or Hadley, Hatfield, Northampton, or Springfield ! 

 New Haven without elms would be like Jupiter without a beard, or 

 a lion shaved of his mane ! " 



The weeping elm grows with great rapidity, and where uninjured 

 by insects, or lack of moisture in the soil, is picturesque and beau- 

 tiful in every stage of its growth. No other tree, when young, 

 throws out its arms so free and wild, and assumes so great a variety 

 of forms. Figs. 63 and 76 are two sketches from nature of 

 young weeping elms, illustrative of this characteristic. Very fine 

 specimens of this elm may be seen at the west, which have attained 

 a majestic height in the forest, and then had their environing trees 

 gradually cut from around them. At first they are little more than 



