Page:Timber and Timber Trees, Native and Foreign.djvu/238

218 troop of at least eighty men. Another, but much smaller, in the department of the Cher, France, measured over 30 feet in circumference; this has been known for five or six centuries as the great Chestnut tree, and must be of very great age.

THE ENGLISH ELM TREE (Ulmus campestris)

is found growing in the hedgerows of most of the counties, and forming the avenues in many of the parks of England. It also occupies a wide range over Europe, preferring generally low lying, level ground, with a moderate degree of moisture. It thrives well in every variety of soil, provided the situation be open, but attains the greatest perfection when grown in a rich loam, reaching, under favourable circumstances, the height of 60 to 70 feet, with a circumference of from 7 to 8 feet.

The wood is brown in colour, of moderate weight, hard, tough, porous, and much twisted in grain, which makes it difficult to work when thoroughly seasoned, and also next to impossible to split it. The medullary rays, if present in this species of wood, are not distinguishable and this in some measure accounts for its strong cohesive properties.

The economical uses of the Elm are very great, since we find it extensively employed in engineering works for piles, pipes, pumps, blocks, &c.; it is also used for keels and planks underwater in ships. Carpenters, wheel¬wrights, turners, and cabinet-makers also use it for so many purposes, that it would be very difficult to enumerate them.

Elm timber, if used either where it is constantly under water, or in any situation where it is kept perfectly dry, excels almost every other kind of wood in durability. But under any other circumstances it decays rather