934. WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
He says it may be propagated with more ease than any tree of 
the forest, and the speedy returns of fuel it will make, lead him 
to believe that its cultivation would become general, if its value 
were duly appreciated. ‘The wood of buttonwood trees grown 
in moist situations burns very ill when green, but when it 
grows on dry, sandy or rocky soils, it burns as freely, when 
green, as oak cut at the same time. It is not, he thinks, equal 
to the best kinds of fuel, but it is superior to chestnut, and makes 
excellent charcoal. ‘It is a very valuable fuel for stoves. 
Perhaps it may be ranked with the best kinds of soft maple.”’ 
Lf the question is, what kind of tree, on land of the same fertility, 
will fumish fuel which will give the greatest amount of caloric, 
he says, ‘I do not hesitate to declare my perfect conviction, 
that it, (the buttonwood,) will furnish results much more favor- 
able than any tree our country produces, except the locust on 
dry soils.” 
There are many remarkable trees of this kind in various 
parts of the State. In 1839, I measured two in front of the 
house of Elijah Bascom, Jr.,in Hanover. The first was thir- 
teen feet five inches in girth at the ground, and ten feet two 
and a half inches at four and a half feet, with many large, 
spreading branches, forming a broad top and an ample shade. 
The other was twelve feet and two inches in girth at the ground, 
and ten feet three inches at four and a half feet, with branches 
larger but less spreading. In Rochester, one by the road-side 
was eleven feet in circumference at four feet from the ground. 
One in Roxbury, in a lot of J. Davis, nearly opposite the house 
of E. Francis, Esq., measured, in 1837, fifteen feet six inches 
at five and a half feet from the surface. An old hollow tree 
near the little bridge over the south branch of the Nashua, in 
Lancaster, bending over the water, was, in 1840, sixteen feet 
ten inches at the ground, fifteen feet nine inches at three, and 
fourteen feet nine inches at six feet. A second near it and vig- 
orous, was, at the same heights respectively, sixteen feet eleven 
inches, thirteen feet six inches, and thirteen feet four inches. A 
third, an opening at the foot of which showed that it was exten- 
sively decayed at the centre, was twenty-three feet two inches 
at the ground, eighteen feet six inches at three feet, and eighteen 
