THE COMMON ELM 45 



" ' Elms are very treacherous, and I recommend you to have 

 nothing to do with them, dear.' 



" ' But how could he hurt me 1 ' said Bevis. 



" ' He can wait till you go under him,' said the squirrel, ' and 

 then drop that big bough on you. He has had that bough waiting 

 to drop on somebody for quite ten years. Just look up and see how 

 thick it is, and heavy ; why, it would smash a man out flat. Now, 

 the reason the Elms are so dangerous is because they vrill wait so 

 long till somebody passes. Trees can do a great deal, I can tell 

 you : why, I have known a tree, when it could not drop a bough, 

 fall down altogether when there was not a breath of wind nor any 

 lightning, just to kiU a cow or a sheep out of sheer bad temper.' " 



The stems of old Elms often become distorted 

 ■with huge wart-like swellings, that put out tufts of 

 little leafy twigs, especially when branches have been 

 removed by man or nature. The wood of these swell- 

 ings is ornamentally mottled, and takes a better 

 polish than the ordinary timber of the tree, and is 

 therefore valued for veneering ; and in France the 

 trees are sometimes lopped on purpose to produce 

 these knots. The chief insect foes of the Elm are 

 the caterpillar of the Goat-moth (Gos'sus ligniper'da) , 

 which eats its way into the wood, and the Elm-bark 

 Beetle (Scol'ytus destructor). This latter insect pierces 

 innumerable holes through the bark, and forms ex- 

 tensive branching galleries in the inner bark and 

 young wood. The remedies suggested are various; 

 but the best is the preventive measure of not allowing 

 the felled trunks of infested Elms to remain on the 

 ground with their bark on. Far more disfiguring, 

 however, than these defects are those caused by man's 

 ill-treatment. In many agricultural counties the 

 Elms may be seen trimmed, to a height of forty 

 or fifty feet, of every bough, so that they resemble 



