196 



FLORA AND SYLVA. 



exceeded in dimensions by numerous other specimens, few are more beautiful. 

 It has marked the passing of the stage coach of old, and hearkened to the whistle 

 of the first railway train from the distant vale. It has viewed the forest's fall, and 

 witnessed the tilth and largesse of husbandry supplant the Red Man's hunting 

 fields. Years ago, the king of Apples, the Northern Spy, first bore its ruddy 

 fruit almost near this tree; and when in winter snow and sleet have whitened 

 its lofty crest and the winds have roared through its delicate spray, it has but 

 smiled through the storm and dreamed of the caress of coming April showers. 



Of other historic Elms which have already lived their allotted span, is the 

 Penn's Treaty Elm, beneath which, in 1682, the Indian sachems and the 

 Quakers met at Coaquannoc, the Indian name for Philadelphia, and pledged 

 themselves to live in love with William Penn and his children so long as the sun 

 and moon should endure. In 1 8 10 the tree was blown down in a gale of wind, 

 when, on counting its annular rings, it proved to be 283 years of age. 



The old Elm at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, which was struck by lightning in 

 1 84 1 and fell in 1861, measured 128 feet in height, with a trunk 13 feet 

 9 inches in circumference at a yard from the ground, and with an extent of 

 90 feet to the lowermost limbs. At the time the town was first settled, over 

 150 years ago, it was a beautiful tall tree said to be a century and a half old, 

 which from the symmetry of its trunk, and its palm-like summit, was spared by 

 the woodman's axe while the rest of its forest brethren were felled. 



The Pittsfield Elm was figured in plates, platters, pitchers, and dinner ser- 

 vices by Clews, one of the old Staffordshire potters that sent their beautiful dark 

 blue wares in immense quantities to this country during the early portion of the 

 past century. The view presents a winter scene, the town common, with the 

 church and other public buildings. In the foreground is an enclosure with a 

 skeleton tree intended to represent the famous Elm. The design of the church 

 appears in three medallions in the border of the plate. Examples of this, like all 

 other old blue historical pieces, have become extremely rare and are very highly 

 prized. 



Many of the arboreal patriarchs, so intimately connected with the history 

 and progress of the country, that reared their verdant arches in majestic ampli- 

 tude a few decades ago are now no more. " Where," asks Oliver Wendell 

 Holmes, writing twelve years ago, " is the 'Great Elm' which looked upon 

 Shawmut before Blackstone rode his bull through the woods where is now our 

 Boston Common ? Where is that huge 'Johnston Elm,' near Providence, which 

 in the days of my early manhood spread its gigantic branches in full vigour, 

 and offered its vast trunk to my measuring tape without feeling a quiver in its 

 most nicely poised leaf? Where is the colossal 'Springfield Elm,' the only one 

 I have ever found which would have dared to challenge the great English Elm 

 I saw at Oxford ? All gone, and many another wrecked or prostrate or vanished 

 that I have looked upon in its glory." 



