As I rode along the pleasant way, watching eagerly for the object of my journey, the rounded tops of the elms rose from time to time at the road-side.Wherever one looked taller and fuller than the rest, I asked myself, - "Is this it?" But as I drew nearer, they grew smaller, - or it proved, perhaps, that two standing in a line had looked like one, and so deceived me.At last, all at once, when I was not thinking of it, - I declare to you it makes my flesh creep when I think of it now, - all at once I saw a great, green cloud swelling in the horizon, so vast, so symmetrical, of such Olympian majesty and imperial supremacy among the lesser forest-growths, that my heart stopped short, then jumped at my ribs as a hunter springs at a five-barred gate, and I felt all through me, without need of uttering the words, - "This is it!"You will find this tree described, with many others, in the excellent Report upon the Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts.The author has given my friend the Professor credit for some of his measurements, but measured this tree himself, carefully.It is a grand elm for size of trunk, spread of limbs, and muscular development, - one of the first, perhaps the first, of the first class of New England elms.
The largest actual girth I have ever found at five feet from the ground is in the great elm lying a stone's throw or two north of the main road (if my points of compass are right) in Springfield.
But this has much the appearance of having been formed by the union of two trunks growing side by side.
The West-Springfield elm and one upon Northampton meadows, belong also to the first class of trees.
There is a noble old wreck of an elm at Hatfield, which used to spread its claws out over a circumference of thirty-five feet or more before they covered the foot of its bole up with earth.This is the American elm most like an oak of any I have ever seen.
The Sheffield elm is equally remarkable for size and perfection of form.I have seen nothing that comes near it in Berkshire County, and few to compare with it anywhere.I am not sure that I remember any other first-class elms in New England, but there may be many.
- What makes a first-class elm? - Why, size, in the first place, and chiefly.Anything over twenty feet of clear girth, five feet above the ground, and with a spread of branches a hundred feet across, may claim that title, according to my scale.All of them, with the questionable exception of the Springfield tree above referred to, stop, so far as my experience goes, at about twenty-two or twenty-three feet of girth and a hundred and twenty of spread.
Elms of the second class, generally ranging from fourteen to eighteen feet, are comparatively common.The queen of them all is that glorious tree near one of the churches in Springfield.
Beautiful and stately she is beyond all praise.The "great tree"on Boston Common comes in the second rank, as does the one at Cohasset, which used to have, and probably has still, a head as round as an apple-tree, and that at Newburyport, with scores of others which might be mentioned.These last two have perhaps been over-celebrated.Both, however, are pleasing vegetables.The poor old Pittsfield elm lives on its past reputation.A wig of false leaves is indispensable to make it presentable.
[I don't doubt there may be some monster-elm or other, vegetating green, but inglorious, in some remote New England village, which only wants a sacred singer to make it celebrated.Send us your measurements, - (certified by the postmaster, to avoid possible imposition,) - circumference five feet from soil, length of line from bough-end to bough-end, and we will see what can be done for you.]
- I wish somebody would get us up the following work:-SYLVA NOVANGLICA.
Photographs of New England Elms and other Trees, taken upon the Same Scale of Magnitude.With Letter-Press Descriptions, by a Distinguished Literary Gentleman.Boston & Co.185..
The same camera should be used, - so far as possible, - at a fixed distance.Our friend, who has given us so many interesting figures in his "Trees of America," must not think this Prospectus invades his province; a dozen portraits, with lively descriptions, would be a pretty complement to his large work, which, so far as published, I find excellent.If my plan were carried out, and another series of a dozen English trees photographed on the same scale the comparison would be charming.
It has always been a favorite idea of mine to bring the life of the Old and the New World face to face, by an accurate comparison of their various types of organization.We should begin with man, of course; institute a large and exact comparison between the development of LA PIANTA UMANA, as Alfieri called it, in different sections of each country, in the different callings, at different ages, estimating height, weigh, force by the dynamometer and the spirometer, and finishing off with a series of typical photographs, giving the principal national physiognomies.Mr.Hutchinson has given us some excellent English data to begin with.
Then I would follow this up by contrasting the various parallel forms of life in the two continents.Our naturalists have often referred to this incidentally or expressly; but the ANIMUS of Nature in the two half globes of the planet is so momentous a point of interest to our race, that it should be made a subject of express and elaborate study.Go out with me into that walk which we call THE MALL, and look at the English and American elms.The American elm is tall, graceful, slender-sprayed, and drooping as if from languor.The English elm is compact, robust, holds its branches up, and carries its leaves for weeks longer than our own native tree.
Is this typical of the creative force on the two sides of the ocean, or not? Nothing but a careful comparison through the whole realm of life can answer this question.
