WITCH, or WYCH, ELM, the common broad-leaved elm (Camas glabra) of England and Scotland, which does not grow to so large dimensions as the field elm; nevertheless at Selborne, Gilbert White measured a witch elm which, seven feet from the ground, was eight feet in diameter. It is a tree of picturesque habit, and, unless grown in crowded masses, rarely produces a straight trunk. It has a wide, spreading head, often slanted to one side, and the branches begin near the base. These droop ing branches lash neighboring trees unmerci fully, and if they chance to rest on the ground readily strike root. The tree is easily increased by layers or by the abundant seeds. The timber of the witch elm is more durable than that of other English elms, but has their fine-grained, tough and elastic qualities. It is very flexible when steamed, and is utilized for bent-wood work, frames in boat-building and bows; in olden times, if the branches were forked, they served as divining-rods, perhaps because of the likeness of the broad, ovate leaves to those of the hazel, which is one of the so-called light ning plants. These plants arc sacred to Thor, arc considered to be an actual embodiment of lightning, and their forked branches (having. according to mythology, a resemblance to a lightning flash) are used as talismans to point out the hidden stores of gold or subterranean water.
a tall, sometimes arbor escent shrub I 1 ((Imams-lit •irginiana) of eastern American woodlands. It has a characteristic horizontal, straggling growth; as Thoreau says: 'Its spray, so jointed and angular, is not to be mistaken for any other.' Witch-hazel is one of the most difficult shrubs to eradicate from a clearing, as it has many diverging stems, so crooked and springy as to render axe-work un successful The hark is pale-gray; the leaves, somewhat resembling the ovate foliage of the hazel-nut, arc more or less oblique and undu late-edged, not at all handsome, but turning to a beautiful clear yellow in autumn. No sooner
have they fallen off, with the rest of the forest foliage, in October or November, than the witch-hazels reclothe themselves with a lumi nous vesture of filmy, featherly yellow, which turns out to be the long-delayed blossoms whether the earliest or the latest flowers of the year botanists cannot decide. Individually, they are not conspicuous, having only four nar row, strap-shaped, golden petals, but are so tufted on the twigs as to gild the bushes. Mean while the fruits, little blunt, horned woody cap sules that have been slowly ripening since the previous fall, begin to gape, and by elastic fis suring and incurving their walls, shoot their stony-hard, bullet-shaped, polished seeds far and wide. Twigs of this witch-hazel, so unortho dox in its season of blooming, and remotely re sembling the hazel-nut in foliage, were chosen as material for the forked divining-rods, which, twisting in the hand of the treasure-seeker, or well-digger, pointed downward and disclosed the site of subterranean water or gold. A much more practical use for has been found nowadays. An infusion of the leaves of witch-hazel in alcohol furnishes the familiar slightly astringent and tonic lotion for external inflammations known as 'witch-hazel' or 'hamamelis.' Branches of witch-hazel thrown into the fire exhale the characteristic, peculux odor of the lotion. Both the foliage and bark moreover, contain much tannin. The witch-elm (q.v.) of England is also called witch-hazel