first time. Provincialism has no SCALE of excellence in man or

vegetable; it never knows a first-rate article of either kind when
it has it, and is constantlytaking second and third rate ones for

Nature's best. I have often fancied the tree was afraid of me, and
that a sort of shiver came over it as over a betrothed maiden when

she first stands before the unknown to whom she has been plighted.
Before the measuring-tape the proudest tree of them all quails and

shrinks into itself. All those stories of four or five men
stretching their arms around it and not touching each other's

fingers, if one's pacing the shadow at noon and making it so many
hundred feet, die upon its leafy lips in the presence of the awful

ribbon which has strangled so many false pretensions.
As I rode along the pleasant way, watching eagerly for the object

of my journey, the rounded tops of the elms rose from time to time
at the road-side. Wherever one looked taller and fuller than the

rest, I asked myself, - "Is this it?" But as I drew nearer, they
grew smaller, - or it proved, perhaps, that two standing in a line

had looked like one, and so deceived me. At last, all at once,
when I was not thinking of it, - I declare to you it makes my flesh

creep when I think of it now, - all at once I saw a great, green
cloud swelling in the horizon, so vast, so symmetrical, of such

Olympian majesty and imperialsupremacy among the lesser forest-
growths, that my heart stopped short, then jumped at my ribs as a

hunter springs at a five-barred gate, and I felt all through me,
without need of uttering the words, - "This is it!"

You will find this tree described, with many others, in the
excellent Report upon the Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts. The

author has given my friend the Professor credit for some of his
measurements, but measured this tree himself, carefully. It is a

grand elm for size of trunk, spread of limbs, and muscular
development, - one of the first, perhaps the first, of the first

class of New England elms.
The largest actual girth I have ever found at five feet from the

ground is in the great elm lying a stone's throw or two north of
the main road (if my points of compass are right) in Springfield.

But this has much the appearance of having been formed by the union
of two trunks growing side by side.

The West-Springfield elm and one upon Northampton meadows, belong
also to the first class of trees.

There is a noble old wreck of an elm at Hatfield, which used to
spread its claws out over a circumference of thirty-five feet or

more before they covered the foot of its bole up with earth. This
is the American elm most like an oak of any I have ever seen.

The Sheffield elm is equallyremarkable for size and perfection of
form. I have seen nothing that comes near it in Berkshire County,

and few to compare with it anywhere. I am not sure that I remember
any other first-class elms in New England, but there may be many.

- What makes a first-class elm? - Why, size, in the first place,
and chiefly. Anything over twenty feet of clear girth, five feet

above the ground, and with a spread of branches a hundred feet
across, may claim that title, according to my scale. All of them,

with the questionableexception of the Springfield tree above
referred to, stop, so far as my experience goes, at about twenty-

two or twenty-three feet of girth and a hundred and twenty of
spread.

Elms of the second class, generally ranging from fourteen to
eighteen feet, are comparatively common. The queen of them all is

that glorious tree near one of the churches in Springfield.
Beautiful and stately she is beyond all praise. The "great tree"

on Boston Common comes in the second rank, as does the one at
Cohasset, which used to have, and probably has still, a head as

round as an apple-tree, and that at Newburyport, with scores of
others which might be mentioned. These last two have perhaps been

over-celebrated. Both, however, are pleasing vegetables. The poor
old Pittsfield elm lives on its past reputation. A wig of false

leaves is indispensable to make it presentable.
[I don't doubt there may be some monster-elm or other, vegetating

green, but inglorious, in some remote New England village, which
only wants a sacredsinger to make it celebrated. Send us your

measurements, - (certified by the postmaster, to avoid possible
imposition,) - circumference five feet from soil, length of line

from bough-end to bough-end, and we will see what can be done for
you.]

- I wish somebody would get us up the following work:-
SYLVA NOVANGLICA.

Photographs of New England Elms and other Trees, taken upon the
Same Scale of Magnitude. With Letter-Press Descriptions, by a

Distinguished Literary Gentleman. Boston & Co. 185..
The same camera should be used, - so far as possible, - at a fixed

distance. Our friend, who has given us so many interesting figures
in his "Trees of America," must not think this Prospectus invades

his province; a dozen portraits, with lively descriptions, would be
a pretty complement to his large work, which, so far as published,

I find excellent. If my plan were carried out, and another series
of a dozen English trees photographed on the same scale the

comparison would be charming.
It has always been a favorite idea of mine to bring the life of the

Old and the New World face to face, by an accuratecomparison of
their various types of organization. We should begin with man, of

course; institute a large and exact comparison between the
development of LA PIANTA UMANA, as Alfieri called it, in different

sections of each country, in the different callings, at different
ages, estimating height, weigh, force by the dynamometer and the

spirometer, and finishing off with a series of typical photographs,
giving the principal national physiognomies. Mr. Hutchinson has

given us some excellent English data to begin with.
Then I would follow this up by contrasting the various parallel

forms of life in the two continents. Our naturalists have often
referred to this incidentally or expressly; but the ANIMUS of

Nature in the two half globes of the planet is so momentous a point
of interest to our race, that it should be made a subject of

express and elaborate study. Go out with me into that walk which
we call THE MALL, and look at the English and American elms. The

American elm is tall, graceful, slender-sprayed, and drooping as if
from languor. The English elm is compact, robust, holds its

branches up, and carries its leaves for weeks longer than our own
native tree.

Is this typical of the creative force on the two sides of the
ocean, or not? Nothing but a careful comparison through the whole

realm of life can answer this question.
There is a parallelism without identity in the animal and vegetable

life of the two continents, which favors the task of comparison in
an extraordinary manner. Just as we have two trees alike in many

ways, yet not the same, both elms, yet easily distinguishable, just
so we have a complete flora and a fauna, which, parting from the

same ideal, embody it with various modifications. Inventive power
is the only quality of which the Creative Intelligence seems to be

economical; just as with our largest human minds, that is the
divinest of faculties, and the one that most exhausts the mind

which exercises it. As the same patterns have very commonly been
followed, we can see which is worked out in the largest spirit, and

determine the exact limitations under which the Creator places the
movement of life in all its manifestations in either locality. We

should find ourselves in a very false position, if it should prove
that Anglo-Saxons can't live here, but die out, if not kept up by

fresh supplies, as Dr. Knox and other more or less wise persons
have maintained. It may turn out the other way, as I have heard

one of our literary celebrities argue, - and though I took the
other side, I liked his best, - that the American is the Englishman