The Elm is frequently referred to by the poets. 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, named the JOYFUL TREE;
From 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. Philips, 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 the Elm to be indigenous to the soil, confuted as it is by Nature, which rarely allows it to propagate its species in this country according to her common rules; while in other countries, where the seed falls, young plants spring up as commonly as the oaks in Britain.

In favourable situations, the common Elm becomes a large timber tree, of considerable beauty and utility, naturally growing upright. It is the first tree to put forth its light and cheerful green

in spring, a tint which contrasts agreeably with the foliage of the oak, whose leaf has generally,

Specific characters of U. campestris. Leaves rhomboid-ovate, acuminate, wedge-shaped, and oblique at the base, always scabrous above, doubly and irregularly serrated, downy beneath; serratures incurved. Branches wiry, slightly corky; when young, bright brown, pubescent. Fruit oblong, deeply cloven, naked.

We see

in its early state, more of an olive cast. them often in fine harmony together about the end of April and the beginning of May. The Elm is also frequently found planted with the Scotch fir. In spring, its light green is very discordant with the gloomy hue of its companion; but as the year advances, the Elm leaf takes a darker tint, and unites in harmony with the fir. In autumn also, the yellow leaf of the Elm mixes as kindly with the orange of the beech, the ochre of the oak, and many of the other fading hues of the wood.

The Elm was considered by the ancients of Eastern nations as a funereal 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 the 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 speak 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 the 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.

OVID.

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 vigour. The principal one is seventy-nine feet high, fourteen feet in girth at three feet from the ground, sixty-five in extent of boughs, and contains two hundred and fifty-six feet of solid timber. Strutt informs us, that, in 1830, Dr. Barrington, 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-favoured 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, in Kent, 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 V.'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 of the size of a large tree, and gracefully descending to the ground; the whole forming a splendid