SECTION XIII. 



475 



another species, which Is well worth being tried in the milder climates of 

 Scotland, or, as he thinks, in some of the sheltered valleys of the High- 

 lands — namely, the White Elm of North America. From the surpris- 

 ing magnificence of the tree as represented by Michaux, and the cold 

 latitudes in which he found it to thrive, it appears to deserve the 

 attention of every one interested in the ornamental branch of planting. 

 Probably, also, the Red Elm of Canada is worthy of the same encomium. 



The broad-leaved or Scotch Elm is always propagated by the seed; 

 the narrow-leaved or English, uniformly by suckers ; and the most 

 attentive observers never having known it to produce seed, affords 

 strong presumptive evidence, as has been noticed in the text, of its 

 foreign origin. From the circumstance of its being so uncommonly 

 given to throw out suckers, nurserymen have devised the method of 

 engrafting it on the broad-leaved, which checks that propensity. This 

 practice has likewise another good effect, and that is, that it makes the 

 narrow-leaved more hardy, and capable of succeeding on much poorer 

 land than it would otherwise require. 



Note V. Page 315. 



As the whole Elm family require a deep soil, they never reach the 

 same great size in Scotland as they do in England. Cook, who may 

 be called our first writer on planting of any consideration, mentions a 

 Witch Elm, in Sir Walter Bagot's park in Staffordshire, which, after 

 two men had been five days felling it, lay forty yards in length, and was, 

 at the stool, seventeen feet in diameter. It broke, in its fall, fourteen 

 loads ; it had forty-eight in the top ; it yielded eighty pairs of naves, 

 eight thousand six hundred and sixty feet of boards and planks ; it 

 cost ten pounds , seventeen shillings the sawing, (equal to about forty 

 pounds at present ;) and the whole was estimated at ninety-seven tons ! 

 " This (says Evelyn) was certainly a goodly stick !" Marsham, in his 

 curious account of the growth and age of trees, published in the Bath 

 Society's papers, mentions a Witch Elm, near Bradley Church, Suff'olk, 

 which in 1767 measured twenty-six feet three inches at five feet from 

 the ground ; and Professor Martyn notices others that exceeded four- 

 and-twenty feet, or eight feet in diameter. But we never had any 

 thing like these north of the Tweed. 



Note VI. Page 316. 



Probably one of the finest and most vigorous narrow- leaved Elms in 

 England stands in the vale of Gloucester, in the parish of Church-down, 



