"Some of the most remarkable trees of Europe are Chestnut-trees. On Mount Ætna is the famous Castagno di cento cavalli, so called from its having sheltered a hundred mounted cavaliers. Brydon found this, in 1770, two hundred and four feet in circumference, and it had the appearance of five distinct trees. A century before, when seen by Kircher, they were united, so that probably it had been one tree. The Forworth Chestnut, in England, was fifty-two feet in girth in 1820, when measured by Strutt. Near Sanserre, in France, is a tree of more than ten feet in diameter at six feet from the ground. It is supposed to be a thousand years old."
The largest measurements given of the Chestnut in this country are of one in Bolton, with an erect, undivided trunk forty or fifty feet; three feet from the ground it measured seventeen feet in circumference.
"Southeast of Monument Mountain, near the road leading to Sheffield, in a pasture, an old Chestnut measured, in September, 1844, 'at the ground, thirty feet two inches in circumference; at four feet, twenty-one feet in circumference: the branches extended sixty feet.'"
The Balm of Gilead, the Willow, of which there are twenty-one species, the Ash and Basswood, the Poplar and Hemlock, all afford specimens of great magnitude, as well as possess properties of much value; to which list we may add the Hickory, chiefly for the great variety of valuable purposes to which the wood is appropriated. "Few trees contribute so much to the beauty of woods in autumn; the colors of all at that season are rich, and each species has its own. The fruit of some of the species in its wild state vies with the best of foreign nuts."
THE FIR-TREE.
"In its native forests the Fir-tree varies from two to ten feet in diameter, and from one hundred to one hundred and eighty feet in height. A stump is mentioned as still found on the Columbia River, which measures forty-eight feet in circumference at three feet from the ground, exclusive of its very thick bark."
THE SPRUCE-TREE.
This tree presents a tapering trunk, with a top of mathematical exactness, a regular cone. They attain to the height of seventy or one hundred feet, measuring at the base—the largest I have ever seen—about eight feet in circumference. Lightness, strength, and elasticity are the distinguishing qualities of this wood; and, owing to this, it is extensively used in ship-building, and the frame-work of houses.
The Hemlock is a large tree, often measuring fifteen feet in circumference at the base; the column rises to an elevation of from seventy to one hundred feet; it holds its size remarkably until it reaches the principal limbs, two thirds its height, when it tapers rapidly to the extremity. Its foliage is beautiful for its softness, and forms the principal ingredient in the bed of lumbermen. The use of the boughs for brooms is known to the good country people throughout New England. By persons of classical taste, it is considered the most beautiful of the evergreens.
The author of Massachusetts Reports on Trees, &c., to whom I am much indebted for many of the preceding observations, remarks of the young Hemlock, "that in the beginning of summer each twig is terminated with a tuft of yellowish-green, recent leaves, surmounting the darker green of the former year; the effect, as an object of beauty, is equaled by very few flowering shrubs, and far surpasses that produced by any other tree." The bark is valuable in tanning leather, and makes excellent fuel. This tree grows in immense quantities in the northeast part of Maine, often occupying acres of ground, to the exclusion of nearly all other trees. Its wood is more valued for boards than formerly; its close grain and hardness fit it peculiarly for flooring. "It is much used in the large Atlantic cities as a substitute for stone in the pavement of streets, for which purpose it is sawn into hexagonal (six-sided) blocks of eight inches in thickness, and eight, ten, or eighteen inches in breadth."