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 equally remarkable 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
questionable exception 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.
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