To this may be added the fact that the most notable elm trees will usually be found at cross-roads—as Maul’s Elm at Cheltenham, nearly 40 feet in circumference, or about dwellings; the fine old trunk at the Slade Farm, near Stroud, Gloucestershire, as much as 50 feet, for some time hollow, and once used as a cider-mill; the fine elms in our parks, as at Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, and others; and such avenues of elms as seen at Christchurch. As a timber tree the Scotch elm is not esteemed so highly as is the English sort. To begin with, it does not grow such straight even balks; it is more gnarled and knotty in sawing, and more difficult to work. Selby says that Scottish writers have arrived at a different conclusion, which he conceives to have arisen from the fact that “their estimate has been drawn from a comparison of the wood of _U. montana_ with that of _U. suberosa_ (considered by them to be the English elm), which produces a soft, spongy wood, greatly inferior to most other trees of the genus.” It is used for flooring and rough country work. The peculiar wen-like excrescences that one sometimes meets with on the sides of wych elms are carefully preserved and cut into veneers for fine loo-tables, work-boxes, and other purposes, when a peculiar mottled fine-coloured wood is required for fancy-work. Some of the finest elms we have examined have been Maul’s elm, Piff’s elm, the Slade elm, before mentioned, and the following, measured at one and three feet from the ground. Circum. at Circum. at 1 foot. 3 feet. _Ulmus montana_, Oakley Park, Cirencester 38 0 33 6 Ditto, Hyde Park — 20 6 Ditto, Hyde Park — 20 0 Ditto, group of twelve in Kensington Gardens, varying to — 20 0 _Ulmus campestris_, Hyde Park, several varying from 20 ft. to — 30 0 Ditto, in Oakley Park, from 15 ft. to — 22 0 CHAPTER XLV. ON THE ASH, BEECH, AND OTHER WHITE-WOODED TREES. THE ASH (_Fraxinus excelsior_), when well-grown and in good foliage, is one of our most charming trees; its light, graceful, and agreeably-coloured leaves, united with a graceful disposition of lithe, smoothly-formed limbs, altogether fully entitle it to be considered as the “Venus of the Forest.” The leaves of the common ash are pinnate, with from three to four pairs of leaflets and one terminal leaflet. This latter is sometimes absent when the apex is bifoliate, and a form called the double-leaf is produced, which even at this day is reputed by the rustics to be capable of working various charms.