TREE S.

Mr. Editor.-Our City Council are doing well in planting out trees. By delaying, however, the boxing up of them, they are exposing them to certain destruction, many of them-one third being already deprived of their bark by horses. Such injury, if not fatal, as it often is, will assuredly impair the growth, the size, the beauty and the duration of the tree. What deserves to be done, deserves to be well done, and as many have been delighted by seeing these trees planted, they will it is hoped be both increased and protected.

On the beauty of trees, Gilpin in his Forest Scenery remarks (vol. 1, p. 45)-It is no exaggerated praise to call a tree the grandest and most beautiful of all the productions of the earth. In the former of these epithets nothing contends with it; for we consider rocks and mountains as part of the earth itself. And though among inferior plants, shrubs and flowers, there is great beauty, yet when we consider that these minuter productions are chiefly beautiful as individuals, and are not adapted to form the arrangement of composition in landscape, nor to receive the effects of light and shade, they must give place in point of beauty-of picturesque beauty, at least, which we are here considering-to the form, and foliage, and ramification of the tree. Thus the splendid tints of the insect, however beautiful, must yield to the elegance and proportion of animals which range in a higher class.

With animal life I should not set the tree in competition. The shape, the different colored fur, the varied and spirited attitudes, the character and motion, which strike us in the animal creation, are certainly beyond still life in its most pleasing appearance. I should only observe with regard to trees, that nature has been kinder to them in point of variety, than even to its living forms. Though every animal is distinguished from its fellow, by some little variation of colour, character or shape, yet in all the larger parts, in the body and limbs, the reasemblance is generally exact. In trees, it is just the reverse, the smaller parts, the spray, the leaves, the blossom and the seed, are the same in all trees of the same kind: while the larger parts, from which the most beautiful varieties result, are wholly different. You never see two oaks with an equal number of limbs, the same kind of head, and twisted in the same form. However, as a variety is not alone sufficient to give superiority to the tree, we give the preference, on the whole, to animal life.

T. S.

THE ELM TREE.

Mr. Editor:-This ought to be, as far as possible the ornament of our streets. Its height, its duration, its shade, its facility of transportation and growth when it is carefully protected by a box, all recommend it. And then, how matchless is it in beauty. In a bright summer's day, says a recent writer, we raise our pen from the paper and look out upon the landscape. The first individual object that arrests our eye is an elm treenot indeed, the best example we could find in nature to illustrate our doctrine, but as it casually offers itself to our observation, let us see to what extent the Creator, even here, has consulted the principle of beauty. First, the figure of the tree, as a whole, is majestic and graceful. The various parts severally contribute to this impression. Its massive trunk braced below with buttresses, and tapering above, supporting a spreading dome, forms such a union of lightness and strength, as the mind always loves to recognise either in nature or art. The top also is beautiful for its symmetry, which is more remarkable, since every individual branch shoots out with seeming carelessness and ease, without the least apparent reference to any other branch, while all together compose a structure of great regularity of outline. The top waves gracefully in the breeze, and the leaves, refreshed by a recent shower, chance at this time to exhibit that interesting feature described by the poet as characteristic of the foliage of all trees after a summer shower, namely, "glittering as they tremble." Majesty of form, the pleasing union of strength and lightness, symmetry of outline, gracefulness of motion, and richness of foliage, thus combine to make up the impression of the beautiful which we derive from the first and general aspect of the tree. If we next descend to a more minute analysis of the parts, and examine attentively the leaves, the bark, and even the heart-wood, we find no less traces of a regard to the same principle in each. The leaves are stamped in the same mould and every one exhibits the same definite shape, the same serrated edges, and the same verdant covering, and the bark and heart-wood display a nice order and arrangement. But let us call in the microscope to our aid, and now the structure of the leaves and wood reveals the beautiful in a far higher degree than can be discerned by the naked eye, the leaves disclosing a skeleton composed of innumerable fibres delicately interwoven. A thin cross section of a twig, when exposed to a high magnifying power, gives a delightful view of the vessels in which the various fluids of the plant circulate through every part, all which are tastefully arranged in separate groups adapted to each fluid, some for the sap, some for air, and some still more delicate for secretions of a finer order.

The Elm is frequently referred to by the Poets. Our favorite, Wordsworth, thus speaks of a grove of them:

"Upon that open level stood a grove,

The wished-for port to which my course was bound,
Thither I came, and there, amid the gloom

Spread by a brotherhood of lofty Elms,

Appeared a roofless hut."

In "The Church Yard among the Mountains," he introduces one that seems to be the pride of the Village:

"A wide-spread Elm

Stands in our valley, nam'd the Joyful Tree;

From the dateless usage which our peasants hold,

Of giving welcome to the first of May,

By dances round its trunk."

And again

"The Joyful Elm,

Around whose trunk the maidens dance in May."

Dr. Hunter supposes that the Elm is a native of England. Phillips, however, does not agree with this; but admitting that the tree was known in England as early as the Saxon times, observes, that this does not prove it indigenous to the soil, confuted as it is by Nature, which really allows it to propagate its species in this country according to her common rules, and in other countries, where the seed falls, young plants spring up as commonly as the oaks in Britain.

The Elm was considered by the ancients of Eastern nations as a funeral tree, as well as the Cypress. It is celebrated in the Iliad, for having formed a hasty bridge by which Achilles escaped the Xanthus, when that river, by its overflowing, placed him in danger of being carried away. It has been suggested that the Romans probably introduced it, and planted it on the graves of their departed heroes. It was well known among the Latins. Virgil says that their husbandmen bent the young Elm, whilst growing, into the proper shape, for their buris, or plough tail.

"Young Elms with early force in copses bow,

Fit for the figure of the crooked plough."-Dryden.

The Romans esteemed the Elm to be the natural support and friend of the vine; and the feeling that a strong sympathy subsisted between plants, led them never to plant one without the other. The gravest of Latin authors speaks of the Elm as husband of the vine; and Pliny tells us that that Elm is a poor spouse that does not support three vines. This mode of marrying the vine to the Elm gave rise to the elegant insinuation of Vertumnus to Pomona, whose story may be found in Ovid:

"If that fair Elm," he cried, "alone should stand,
No grapes would glow with gold, and tempt the hand;

Or, if that vine without her Elm should grow.

'T would creep a poor neglected shrub below."

This union of the vine and Elm is constantly alluded to by the poets. Tasso, as translated by Fairfax, says:

"The married Elm fell with his fruitful vine."
"The lofty Elm with creeping vines o'erspread."

OVIB.

Milton, narrating the occupations of Adam and Eve before the fall, sings:

They led the vine

To wed her Elm; she, spoused, about him twines
Her marriageable arms, and with her brings

Her dower, the adopted clusters, to adorn

His barren leaves.

And Beaumont says:

The amorous vine

Did with the fair and straight-limbed Elm entwine.

And Wordsworth, in that beautiful reflection, the "Pillar of Trajan," speaks of it:

So, pleased with purple clusters to entwine

Some lofty Elm Tree, mounts the daring vine.

There is a beautiful group of Elms at Mongewell, Oxon, which are in full vigor. The principal one is seventy-nine feet high, fourteen in girth at three feet from the ground, sixty-five feet in extent of boughs, and contains two hundred and fiftysix feet of solid timber. Strutt informs us, that the venerable Bishop of Durham, when in his ninetieth year erected an urn in the midst of their shade, to the memory of two of his friends; inscribing thereon the following classical fragment:

In this once favored walk, beneath these Elms,
Where thickened foliage, to the solar ray
Impervious, sheds a venerable gloom,

Oft in instructive converse we beguiled

The fervid time, which each returning year

To friendship's call devoted. Such things were;
But are, alas! no more.

The Chipstead Elm, which is an English tree, is a fine specimen, and is of an immense size. It is beautiful as to form, and its trunk is richly mantled with ivy. In Henry the Fifth's time, the high road from Rye to London passed close by it, and a fair was held annually under its branches.

At Sprotborough, Yorkshire, stands what is justly regarded as the pride of the grounds-a magnificent English Elm. This noble tree is about fifteen feet in circumference in the bole, and still thicker at the height of four feet from the ground, where it divides into five enormous boughs, each the size of a large tree, and gracefully descending to the ground; the whole forming a splendid mass of foliage, having a diameter of about forty yards from bough to bough end.