DECIDUOUS TREES. 
321 
Strength of its lower arms, the trunk keeps on upwards, and forms 
a squarish oblong head. 
In size the English elm, as recorded by reliable authorities, 
exceeds any specimens of the American elms we have heard of. 
In Warwickshire, at Combe Abbey, thirty years ago, stood a tree 
two hundred years old, one hundred and fifty feet high, seventy- 
four feet across its branches, with a trunk nine and a half feet in 
diameter ! In Gloucestershire, at Doddington Park, was one ninety 
feet high, one hundred and forty-nine feet across its branches., and 
seven feet in diameter of trunk. In fact a height and breadth of 
from ninety to one hundred feet is a common thing in the parks 
of England, and there are many specimens from one hundred to 
one hundred and twenty-five feet in height. 
The growth of the tree is quite rapid, 
fully equal in that respect to our own white 
elm j but its growth is so much more com- 
pact, filling-in as it rises, instead of sending 
out the long. Curved, and rambling annual 
shoots peculiar to the latter, that it has not 
the appearance of growing so rapidly. The 
comparative growth of the English, the 
Scotch, and the American elms, may be 
seen to great advantage near the Mall in 
the New York Central Park. Fig. 103 illus- 
trates the form and style of an English elm, 
fifteen years after planting. 
As an ornamental tree the English elm partakes of the charac- 
ter of the oaks in its branching ; but in the massing of its foliage, 
and the play of lights and shadows on its head, it occupies a place 
midway between the dense-leaved and sharply-stratified, character 
of the beech, and the nobler breaks of the oak and chestnut. Gil- 
pin, in analyzing its picturesque qualities, observes As a pic- 
turesque tree the elm has not so distinct a character as the oak or 
ash. It partakes so much of the oak, that when it is rough and 
old it may easily, at a little distance, be mistaken for one. * * * 
This defect, however, appears chiefly in the skeleton of the elm ; 
in full foliage its character is more marked. No tree is better 
Fig. 103. 
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