CHAI’. Cl.

J/LMa'cIwH.

C'l.MUS.

1383

clays, ami all moist soils. I saw a line of them at Beaulieu Abbey,in Hampshire ,50ft. or 60ft. high, not more than 4ft. or 5 ft. in circumference; all hollow,from the root to the top, as if they had been bored for water pipes. They grewon a sandy, marly, wet, heathy soil.” ( Dendrologia , p. 36.) “ The proprietyof planting the elm,” Marshall observes, “ depends entirely upon the soil: itis the height of folly to plant it upon light sandy soil. There is not, generallyspeaking, a good elm in the whole county of Norfolk : by the time they arriveat the size of a man’s waist, they begin to decay at the heart; and, if not takenat the critical time, they presently become useless as timber. This is the casein all light soils : it is in stiff strong land which the elm delights. It is observ-able, however, that here it grows comparatively slow. In light land, especiallyif it be rich, its growth is very rapid; but its wood is light, porous, and of littlevalue, compared with that grown upon strong land, which is of a closer strongertexture, and at the heart will have the colour, and almost the hardness andheaviness, of iron. On such soils the elm becomes profitable, and is one ofthe four cardinal trees, which ought, above all others, to engage the planter’sattention; it will bear a very wet situation.” ( Planting and Rural Ornament, ii.p. 431.)

Propagation and Culture. The common elm produces abundance of suckersfrom the roots, both near and at a great distance from the stem ; and through-out Europe these afford the most ready mode of propagation, and that whichappears to have been most generally adopted till the establishment of regu-lar commercial nurseries; the suckers being procured from the roots of grownup trees, in hedgerows, parks, or plantations. In Britain , the present modeof propagation is by layers from stools, or by grafting on the U. montana.The layers are made in autumn, or in the course of the winter, and are rooted,or fit to be taken off, in a year. Grafting is generally performed in the whipor splice manner, close to the root, in the spring ; and the plants make shootsof 3 ft. or 4 ft. in length the same year. Budding is sometimes performed, butless frequently. On the Continent, plants are very often procured fromstools, simply by heaping up earth about the shoots which proceed from them.These shoots root into the earth; and, after growing three or four years, duringwhich time they attain the height of 10 ft. or 15 ft., they are slipped off; andeither planted where they are finally to remain, or in nursery lines. Whenthey are transplanted to their final situation, the side shoots are cut off; andthe main stem is headed down to the height of 8 ft. or 10 ft.; so that newlyplanted trees appear nothing more than naked truncheons. The first year, agreat many shoots are produced from the upper extremity of each truncheon;and in the autumn of that year, or in the second spring, these shoots are allcut off but one, which soon forms an erect stem, and as regular a headed treeas if no decapitation had previously taken place. (See Gard. Mag., vol. ii.p.226. and p. 461.; and Annates de la Soc. d’Hort. de Paris, t. xviii. p.360.)This corresponds with Evelyn’s recommendation to plant trees about the‘ scantling of your leg, and to trim off their heads at 5 ft. or 6 ft. in height. ”Cato recommends 5 or 6 fingers in thickness;adding that you can hardly plantan elm too big, provided you trim the roots, and cut off the head. All theavenues and rows of elm trees in Europe were planted in this manner pre-viously to about the middle of the eighteenth century; and, according tojroiteau (Ann., 1. c.), the same practice is still the most general in France .The late Professor Thouin , in his Cours de Culture (tom. ii. p. 231.), arguedagainst it, and had some avenues planted in the Jardin ties Plantes , withoutcutting off the heads of the trees; but, besides being found much more expen-sive, from the necessity of taking up the plants with a greater quantity of roots,transporting them to where they were to be planted with greater care, andpreparing a wider pit to receive them, it was found that they grew much slower■or the first 3 or 4 years than those that had been decapitated. The onlyadvantage proposed to be gained by planting trees with their heads nearlyentire is, that of preserving the centre of their stems from being rotted, inconsequence of the water entering at the end made by the decapitation; hut