THE VEGETATION OF THE LOWER WABASH VALLEY. 661 
forest. The approximate height above the ground beneath of the 
average tree-top level is about one hundred and thirty feet— 
the lowest estimate after a series of careful measurements— while 
the occasional, and by no means infrequent, ‘t monarchs” which 
often tower apparently for one-third their height above the tree- 
top line, attain an altitude of more than one hundred and eighty 
feet, or approach two hundred feet. 
Of the ninety to a hundred species of trees of the lower Wabash 
Valley, about seventy exceed the height of forty feet; forty-six 
(perhaps fifty) exceed seventy feet in height, and about thirty are 
known to reach or exceed the height of one hundred feet.: Of 
the latter class, as many as nine are known certainly to reach, or 
even exceed, the altitude of one hundred and fifty feet, while four 
of them (sycamore, tulip-poplar, pecan and sweet gum), attain, 
or go beyond, an elevation of one hundred and seventy-five feet ! 
The maximum elevation of the tallest sycamore and tulip trees 
is probably not less than two hundred feet. 
Going into these primitive woods, we find symmetrical, solid 
trunks of six feet and upwards in diameter, and fifty feet, or more, 
long to be not uncommon, in half a dozen or more species; while 
now and then we happen on one of those old sycamores, for which 
the rich alluvial bottoms of the western rivers are so famous, 
with a trunk thirty or even forty, possibly fifty or sixty, feet in 
circumference, while perhaps a hundred feet overhead stretch out 
its great white arms, each as large as the biggest trunks them- 
selves of most eastern forests, and whose massive head is one of 
those which lifts itself so high above the surrounding tree-tops. 
The tall, shaft-like trunks of pecans, sweet gums or ashes, occa- 
sionally break on the sight through the dense undergrowth, or 
_ Stand clear and upright in unobstructed view in the rich wet 
_ Woods, and rise straight as an arrow for eighty or ninety, perhaps 
over a hundred, feet before the first branches are thrown out. 
; The following summaries of measurements, made in the summer 
a and fall of 1871, in the vicinity of Mt. Carmel, Illinois, and 
= Mostly within a radius of ten miles, will serve to show pretty well 
. pei usual size of the large timber in that neighborhood. The 
‘Measurements in the first column do not by any means represent 
sader maximum height of these species of trees in the Wabash 
a CY, Since it was not often that trees of the largest size were 
3 Prostrate so that the total height and length of the trunk 
