The Planr. 



begins to ramify near the summits of the general mass of 

 trees. It is very well known^ that the families of the 

 Squatters, or first settlers, frequently scoop out the trunks 

 of these trees; and live in them as houses for years together. 

 These surprisingly large tnmks are sometimes fashioned 

 into Canoes, and Michaux speaks of one of these, which 

 was made to sail on the river Wabash, that was sixty-Jive 

 feet long, and that would, of course, carry more than a 

 hundred persons. 



465. This is quite enough as to the size the tree is capable 

 of attaining. The wood is used for all those purposes that 

 the soft woods are generally applied to. It is frequently 

 used, in America, in the making of bedsteads, and some- 

 times in the interior of the building of houses. It is used 

 universally as butchers' blocks, and for all similar purposes, 

 it being less inclined to split or chip away than blocks 

 made of any other kind of wood. It is also used for blocks 

 on board of ship ; for, though it is rather too light, it 

 has the excellent quality of not being prone to split or 

 crack. 



466. In England it will hardly ever be planted in woods 

 merely for the sake of the timber ; but for avenues, for 

 clumps, for independent trees, in grounds of large space, it is 

 one of the finest trees in the world. It is even more rich and 

 shady in foliage than the Oriental Plane, and does not, 

 like that, shed part of its leaves in the summer. It is pre- 

 ferable beyond all measure to Elms; even its timber is 

 better; it grows beyond measure faster; and its leaves 

 retain their freshness during the whole of the summer, and 

 it is never infested, as the Elm very frequently is, by those 

 caterpillars which make it an object of ugliness instead of 

 an object of beauty. 



