turned, it is not well adapted for bowls and hollow vessels, as it is apt to split when suddenly dried after being wet.

It has been doubted whether the beech be a native of Britain. If it be the fagus of the Romans, this is not probable. Cæsar, who was an acute observer, mentions that he did not find it in the country; and as he was in the warmest and richest parts of it, he was exactly in those in which the beech was the most likely to be found. It is possible, however, that the fagus of the Romans, which obviously got its name from the edible quality of its fruit, may have been either the Italian oak or the chesnut; or the phegos of the Greeks may have been the former, and that of the Romans the latter. Whether the beech be or be not a native of England, its introduction has been prior to the commencement of the written or traditionary history of British trees.

When sheltered, the beech grows to a great height;

and as it lasts long when kept constantly wet, it is well adapted for the sills and floors of locks, for the keels of vessels, and for the planking in the parts constantly kept under water. The small timber of it makes excellent charcoal; the mast or fruit is eaten by hogs; and the poor in Silesia extract from it an oil, which they use as a substitute for butter. The nut is sometimes burnt, for the purpose of making an infusion, which somewhat resembles coffee.

Virgil chose the beech for its shade, for no tree forms so complete a roof. But its bushy head is any thing but beautiful; and its branches have neither the firmness of the oak, nor the elegance of the ash. The hue of the bark is of an agreeable olive; and its trunk, often studded with bold knots, is generally picturesque. Its autumnal hues are particularly beautiful.

ELM.

Of this tree there are about fifteen species. The Common Elm (Ulmus campestris) is generally understood to be indigenous in the south part of the island; and, at any rate, it must have been in England in the time of the Saxons, as many compound names of places, of which the world "elm" forms a part, are to be met with in Domesday Book," the drawing up of which was finished in 1086.

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Elm is a tough and strong timber; but it is coarse and open in the grain, more especially when it has grown upon very rich land. That which grows in the more fertile parts of England is far inferior to the produce of the midland counties of Scotland; the latter being much closer in the grain, harder, more handsome, and taking a finer polish. Of the one, chairs and other articles of furniture are made, while the other is seldom used but for coarse purposes-casks, coffins, wooden presses, &c. The Scotch seems to be the

Elm-Ulmus campestris.

Mountain Elm (Ulmus montana), called wych-hazel, or wych-elm, in some parts of England, and corrupted to " witch elm." The timber of this is sometimes described as being inferior to that of the elm of the plains in closeness and strength; but the ancient statute enjoining the use of bows, in which the wych-hazel is mentioned, and the elm not, is against that hypothesis.

The elm attains a large size, and lives to a great age. Mention is made of one planted by Henry IV. of France, which was standing at the Luxembourg at the commencement of the French Revolution. One at the upper end of Church-lane, Chelsea (said to have been planted by Queen Elizabeth), was felled in 1745. It was thirteen feet in circumference at the bottom, and one hundred and ten feet high. Piffes' elm, near the Boddington Oak, in the vale of Gloucester, was, in 1783, about eighty feet high, and the smallest girth of the principal trunk was sixteen feet. From the planting of Sir Francis Bacon's elms, in Gray's Inn Walks, in 1600, and their decay about 1720, one would be disposed to assign the

healthy period of the elm to about one hundred and twenty years. The health of these must have been, however, affected in some degree by the smoke of London. The superb avenue called "The Long Walk," at Windsor, was planted at the beginning of the last century. Most of the trees have evidently passed their prime. The most profitable age of elms, both for quality and quantity of timber, is, probably, about fifty or sixty years. The central parts of a tree get indurated, lose their natural sap, and are apt to absorb moisture, by which they soon rot on exposure to the air, long before the dry rot consumes them, shielded as they are by the external parts. The predominance of resin insoluble in water, and not liable to be acted on by the acids of the atmosphere, is the cause why the pine and the larch are more durable than the silver fir and the spruce. It is possible that the elm is injured by too much humidity in the soil upon which it grows; and that the Dutch elm, which is usually classed as a different species from the common elm, and of which the timber is good for nothing, may be merely the common one debased in the humid soil of Holland.

The elm rises to a greater height than the generality of English forest trees, with a foliage at once full and hanging loosely, and thus capable of receiving great masses of light, and of producing "the chequered shade" which imparts such a sparkling beauty to woodland scenes. It is the first tree which salutes the spring with its light and cheerful green; and sometimes very early in the season the branches are dark with innumerable small purple flowers, often as full as the subsequent leafy foliage. At this time (April), the common elms in Hyde-park present this singular and beautiful appearance. The bloom of forest trees is not always annual.

The elm has been always considered as one of the

trees which can be most safely transplanted after attaining considerable size. Evelyn gives several accounts of trees of this species being thus removed into other soils. Upon this subject we may properly enter into some detail, as the public attention has been recently much fixed on a plan for the transplantation of large trees, the principal facts of which we shall derive from the highly scientific and practical work of Sir Henry Steuart, of Allanton. The "Planter's Guide" of this eminent physiologist, and the observations of many public writers on his singular and beautiful experiments, have made the transplantation of large trees a subject of general interest.

Though timber trees are among the most delightful ornaments with which any country can be graced, they are ornaments which, generally speaking, a man cannot procure for himself. If they are raised from seed, or planted as saplings, the grandson of the planter is probably the first that can enjoy their beauty, and walk under their shade. Hence a method

of transplanting full-grown timber is a very desirable art. Nor is it desirable only for merely ornamental purposes, for the shelter which trees afford to the soil is one of the surest means of increasing the warmth and fertility of a country; and many districts have been converted from bleakness and sterility, to productiveness and value, by plantations of timber. This is particularly the case where the wind blows over those cold surfaces of heath and morass which occur in the northern parts of the island of Great Britain. The subject has not been investigated with that attention which its importance merits, but appearances render it highly probable that the spawn of mosses and lichens are wafted by the winds; and that if these winds are not purified from the pestilent spawn, they spread a noxious vegetable growth over

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