AN ELM MYSTERY.
Countrymen have been warned that a new , and terrible enemy has come over from the Continent and begun to attack the elm-trees, which on the Continent fall before it like nine- pins. We have been most singularly free from deadly plagues in England to trees and bushes, or indeed to anything. The Bushey chestnuts have continued to, bloom, as they bloom most gorgeously to-day, while a fungus levelled the American chestnuts by the thousand. We have enemies enough, it is true, larch weevils, apple canker, that curious disease which produces so-called " reversion " in black currants. Our plum hedges nurse " silver leaf," and our wild spindles support the bean aphis. The oak is on occasion stripped of all foliage by its special green caterpillar. Eel-worms and wireworms work subterranean harms ; but when all is said Britain is free. from pInguey excesses. But it is well to be careful. Let us " touch wood " and protect our elms, the very pillars of English scenery, as characteristic as the Corinthian pillar of its own architecture. And yet the elm, they say, is not indi- genous, though the wych elm is, because it does not set seed. Thee argument does not seem to me convincing ; but in any event the elm is so precious to us that it behoves us all to keep an eye on our trees, and if they go suddenly yellow within the next month or more to report the jaundice. It is a notifiable disease.
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