dd to the
refined and classic effect. I use the word "classic" advisedly, because,
although apparently out of place in describing a tree, it nevertheless
seems needed for the form of the American elm.

The elm is never rugged as is the oak, but it gives no impression of
effeminacy or weakness. Its uprightness is forceful and strong, and its
clean and shapely bole impresses the beholder as a joining of gently
outcurving columns, ample in strength and of an elegance belonging to
itself alone. If I may dare to compare man-made architectural forms with
the trees that graced the garden of Eden, I would liken the American elm
(it is also the water elm and the white elm, and botanically _Ulmus
Americana_) to the Grecian types, combining stability with elegance,
rather than to the more rugged works of the Goths. Yet the free swing of
the elm's wide-spreading branches inevitably suggests the pointed Gothic
arch in simplicity and obvious strength.

It is difficult to say when the American elm is most worthy of
admiration. In summer those same arching branches are clothed and tipped
with foliage of such elegance and delicacy as the form of the tree would
seem to predicate. The leaf itself is ornate, its straight ribs making
up a serrated and pointed oval form of the most interesting character.
These leaves hang by slender stems, inviting the gentlest zephyr to
start them to singing of comfort in days of summer heat. The elm is
fully clothed down to the drooping tips of the branchlets with foliage,
which, though deepest green above, reflects, under its dense shade, a
soft light from the paler green of the lower side. It is no wonder that
New England claims fame for her elms, which, loved and cared for, arch
over the long village streets that give character to the homes of the
descendants of the Puritan fathers. The fully grown elm presents to the
sun a darkly absorbent hue, and to the passer-by who rests beneath its
shade the most grateful and restful color in all the rainbow's palette.

[Illustration: A mature American elm]

Then, too, the evaporative power of these same leaves is simply
enormous, and generally undreamed of. Who would think that a great,
spreading elm, reaching into the air of August a hundred feet, and
shading a circle of nearly as great diameter, was daily cooling the
atmosphere with tons of water, silently drawn from the bosom of Mother
Earth!

Like many other common trees, the American elm blooms almost u