THE COMMON ELM 47 



are the Hertfordshire, Cornish, Kidbrook, Irish, and 

 ^yorcestershire Elms ; but the leaves of young seed- 

 lings, suckers, and mature trees are so much larger 

 than those of the oft-cropped victims of the hedger's 

 shears as to lead to frequent mistakes in regard to 

 specific identity. 



It is remarkable that, beyond a few casual allu- 

 sions, the Elm has attracted but little attention from 

 our poets ; and to Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton it 

 is but " the vine-prop elm " of Virgil's Italian vine- 

 yards. On the other hand, though they refer mainly 

 to another species, the following passages from " The 

 Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" are too characteristic 

 both of the tree and of the writer to be omitted. 



" I want you to understand, in the first place, that I have a 

 most intense, passionate fondness for trees in general, and have had 

 several romantic attachments to certain trees in paiticular. Now, if 

 you expect me to hold forth in a ' scientific ' way about my tree- 

 loves — to talk, for instance, of the UVitms Ameriewna, and describe 

 the cUiated edges of its samara, and all that, you are an anserine 

 individual, and I must refer you to a dull friend who will discourse 

 to you of such matters. . . . Who cares how many stamens or 

 pistils that little brown flower, which comes out before the leaf, may 

 have to classify it by ? What we want is the meaning, the 

 character, the expression of a tree, as a kind and as an individual. 

 I shall never forget my ride and my introduction to the great 

 Johnston Elm. I always tremble for a celebrated tree when I 

 approach it for the first time. ... I have often fancied the 

 tree was afraid of me, and that a sort of shiver came over it, as over 

 a betrothed maiden when she first stands before the unknown to 

 whom she has been plighted. Before the measuring-tape the 

 proudest tree of them all quails and shrinks into itse'lf. All those 

 stories of four or five men stretching their arms round it and not 

 touching each other's fingers, of one's pacing the shadow at noon 

 and making it so many hundred feet, die upon its leafy lips in the 

 presence of the awful ribbon which has strangled so many false 



