The elm, more especially the broad-leaved Scotch elm, has a peculiar fan-like sloping-to-one-side spread of branches, most perceptible while young; hence the tree when grown up, has generally a slight bending in the stem, which renders it very fitting for floor-timbers of vessels, the only part of a ship, excepting bottom plank, to which it is applicable, as it soon decays above water. Its great toughness and strength, however, render it good floors.
There are some kinds of foreign elm which deserve attention. Some time ago we planted several of these, and lately cut down one of about six inches diameter, which we found a great deal harder and stronger timber than our U. montana. We had this kind under the name of the Broad-leaved American. The bark was rather lighter in colour, and smoother, than U. montana; the leaves were rough and large, and the annual shoots extremely luxuriant; but, probably owing to climate, or difference of circumstance, the exposed situation where we had it growing being very unlike the close American forest, it did not carry up its vigour of growing into {53} the top, although the top was healthy, but continued throwing out numerous annual shoots, five or six feet long, from the bulb and side of stem, which disposition we did not succeed in correcting by pruning. This did not seem to arise from grafting, as some of the shoots broke out higher up than the graft must have been, and there was no difference between the lower and upper shoots.
U. montana, when come to some size, on the primary branches being lopped off, like the oak, often throws out a brush of twigs from the stem, and these twigs impeding the transit of the sap, the brush increases, and the stem thickens considerably, in consequence of a warty-like deposit of wood forming at the root of the twigs. This excrescence, when of size, after being carefully seasoned in some cool moist place, such as the north re-entering angle of a building, exposed to the chipping from the roof, forms a richer veneer for cabinet-work than any other timber. This disposition to form brush and excrescence might be given by art to almost any kind of tree, excepting the coniferæ and beech, and might be made a source of considerable profit. This could easily be effected by slitting, pricking, and bruising the bark at certain periods of the season. A very beautiful waved timber might also be formed by {54} twisting the stems of trees tight up with round ropes, the screw circles of the rope not being quite close to each other; the ropes to remain several seasons, then to be kept off for a season or two, and again applied. The practice of forming warty excrescences might be combined with that of forming wavy fibres, with the finest effect. Of course, those trees with timber of rich colour, and susceptible of high polish, would be the most suitable for undergoing this process. U. campestris also throws out a brush, but from the great inferiority of the timber in beauty, and from its unfitness for cabinet-work, it would be useless to encourage it by art. Some plants of montana, not covered with brush, have a curious unevenness (laced appearance) of the timber in the stem, which renders it a beautiful cabinet plank.
NARROW-LEAVED OR ENGLISH ELM—Ulmus campestris.
There are few Scotchmen, as they migrate southward, who have failed to remark the tame subdued appearance of the landscape of the middle and south of England, where a number of straggling tufted-headed poles, along with windmill towers, occupy {55} the horizon. These straggling, tall, tufted poles, stuck in, perpendicular to the flat surface, are composed of living narrow-leaved elm-trees, which the perseverance of the peasantry in quest of billets, has reduced to this condition. Some varieties of this elm, however, when uncurtailed in lateral expansion, attain the grandest development, stretching forth a hundred giant arms aloft, supporting masses of foliage, fantastically magnificent.
In the neighbourhood of London, this tree is attacked by an insect, which, running along the outside of the timber, within the bark, in a few seasons deprives the individual of life, the bark peeling off in large girdles, threatening to bereave this capital of the finest ornaments of its parks. We have observed, in different kinds of growing trees, such as the apple and oak, the roads of insects traversing between the rhind and wood, although the individual thus affected appeared to suffer little or no injury; and we consider the agency of the insect in the destruction of the English elm around London to be merely sequent to disease—perhaps a taint of corruption, or slight putrescency of the sap, occasioned by the impurities of the London air, assisted by the hard beaten state of the ground[11] above the roots. Should {56} any one examine the inside of the bark of a cut tree, when corruption has just begun with the bark, and see how thoroughly it is undermined by insects, he will, we think, admit the strong probability, that the insect is only subordinate in the destruction of those fine old elms around London. We do not wonder at the condition of the trees—it would not surprise us if the human race in London were swept off by some similar secondary cause.
The small-leaved elm has great disposition to spread by suckers from the roots, and thus extended has become very prevalent throughout most parts of England, in the broad wastes (termed fences), which, from the indolent husbandry, consequent to tithes and the want of leases, generally surround the pasture and corn fields, but which are so necessary to these unvaried plains, as some prominent object, or characteristic land-mark, on which the amor patriæ of the population may perch; the finest remembrances and associations of youth being mixed up with these bushy flower-covered enclosures.
It is with country as with society, strong lasting {57} attachment occurs only where there is individuality of character to give distinctness of image.
“Oh! how should I my true love know,
From many other one?”