—­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.  These last two have perhaps been over-celebrated.  Both, however, are pleasing vegetables.  The poor old Pittsfield elm lives on its past reputation.  A wig of false leaves is indispensable to make it presentable.

[I don’t doubt there may be some monster-elm or other, vegetating green, but inglorious, in some remote New England village, which only wants a sacred singer to make it celebrated.  Send us your measurements,—­(certified by the postmaster, to avoid possible imposition,)—­circumference five feet from soil, length of line from bough-end to bough-end, and we will see what can be done for you.]

—­I wish somebody would get us up the following work:-

SYLVA NOVANGLICA.

Photographs of New England Elms and other Trees, taken upon the Same Scale of Magnitude.  With Letter-Press Descriptions, by a Distinguished Literary Gentleman.  Boston & Co. 185..

The same camera should be used,—­so far as possible,—­at a fixed distance.  Our friend, who has given us so many interesting figures in his “Trees of America,” must not think this Prospectus invades his province; a dozen portraits, with lively descriptions, would be a pretty complement to his large work, which, so far as published, I find excellent.  If my plan were carried out, and another series of a dozen English trees photographed on the same scale the comparison would be charming.

It has always been a favorite idea of mine to bring the life of the Old and the New World face to face, by an accurate comparison of their various types of organization.  We should begin with man, of course; institute a large and exact comparison between the development of la pianta umana, as Alfieri called it, in different sections of each country, in the different callings, at different ages, estimating height, weigh, force by the dynamometer and the spirometer, and finishing off with a series of typical photographs, giving the principal national physiognomies.  Mr. Hutchinson has given us some excellent English data to begin with.