The Elm.--English Elm.--Scotch Elm.--Slippery Elm.--American Elm. --Superiority of latter.--Different Shapes, how accounted for.-- Great Elm on Boston Common.--Rapidity of Growth.--The Riding Stick.--Remarkable Dimensions of noted Trees.--Boston Elm again.-- Its Age.--By whom set out.--Washington Elm, why so named.--"Trees of Peace," a Tribute of Respect.--English Elm in England and America.--Uses in France.--In Russia.--Birch Family.--Its Variety and Uses.--The Maple Family.--Number of Species.--Red Maple.--Unrivaled Beauty of American Forests.--Rock Maple.--Amount of Wood cut from one in Blandford.--Curious method of distinguishing it from the River Maple.--Amount and Value of the Sugar in Massachusetts.--Great Product from one Tree.--Sugar Maple in the State of Maine.--Dr. Jackson's Reports, &c. THE ELM-TREE. Of this family there are several varieties. The American, the English, the Scotch, and Slippery Elm. Of this enumeration, the American Elm stands first in point of ornament, while the timber of the English Elm is esteemed more highly on account of the toughness of the wood. It has been well said that the Elm is a tree deservedly esteemed for its ornament and shade. "The American Elm assumes many different shapes, and all of them beautiful. Of these, three are most striking and distinct. The tall Etruscan vase is formed by four or five limbs separating at twenty or thirty feet from the ground, going up with a gradual divergency to sixty or seventy, and then bending rapidly outward, forming a flat top with a pendent border." "Transplanting the Elm, it is said, often produces in it a character akin to that of the Oak. It is then a broad, round-headed tree." "Of this kind is the 'Great Elm' on Boston Common." Few trees of other species are to be found standing near the abodes of civilized life which have attained the vast dimensions of the Elm. Whatever may have been the peculiar properties of other trees, they have disappeared. Upturned by the passing hurricane, or leveled by the woodman's ax, they have passed away, while the Elm stands at our doors associated with the history and memory of the different generations which, like its autumnal sheddings, have long time ago mingled with the dust. The Elm grows with great rapidity, which, in addition to its beauty as an ornament, secures for it the favor of man. "I once heard," says the author of Massachusetts Reports, &c., an old man, standing under the shade of a tree nearly two feet in diameter, which towered above all around it, say, "This tree, after I had been many years successful in business, and in a change of fortune had retired to this farm, with a little that remained, I stuck into the ground after I had used it as a stick in a ride of eight miles from P."