288 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
disposition of its principal limbs, and to the extreme elegance 
of its summit. In Maine, between Portsmouth and Portland, 
a great number of young white elms are seen detached in the 
middle of the pastures; they ramify at the height of eight, ten, 
or twelve feet, and their limbs, springing at the same point, 
cross each other and rise with a uniform inclination, so as to 
form of the summit a sheaf of regular proportions and admira- 
ble beauty.” 
The character of the trunk is almost as various as that of 
the general form of the tree. "You sometimes see it a straight, 
gradually tapering column, shooting up to sixty or eighty feet 
without a limb; at other times, an inverted small branch or two, 
pushing out at the fork, hangs waving downwards for some feet. 
Again you see it a verdant pillar of foliage, feathering from the 
branches to the ground. 
With this endless variety of beauty, it is not wonderful that 
the American elm should be the greatest favorite with the New 
England people. And it has the additional recommendation of 
retaining much of its beauty when the foliage is gone. ‘The 
sturdy trunk and the airy sweep of the branches are always 
there, and few objects of the kind are more beautiful than 
the feathered, alternate regularity of the spray upon the out- 
most and uppermost boughs. With the earliest spring, these 
are fringed with numerous bunches of red blossoms, soon to 
give place to soft, delicious green of the young leaves. 
Coming with such recommendations, the elm is more fre- 
quently transplanted than any other forest tree, and, from the 
vigor and number of its roots, it is more sure than any other 
to live. It is oftener spared, too, in most parts of the country, 
when the rest of the forestiscut away. We frequently, there- 
fore, see it standing, for a shade to cattle, in pastures, and by 
fences and sometimes in mid fields, on tilled land, or left to 
shade and protect and give an air of comfort to farm-houses. 
And, in the excellent practice, becoming every year more com- 
mon, of ornamenting towns and villages and sheltering sunny 
roads, with rows of trees, the elm is chosen often to the exclu- 
sion of all other trees, of trees too, which, much as we value 
the elm, we cannot but consider its equals and often its su- 
