sively along the valleys of the streams. It is usually from 80 to 100 feet in height, but has been found nearly 200 feet with a very narrow base.” In reference to the “The Elm,” he states that “Russell Smith, a well known American landscape painter, has painted for the American Academy of Music of Philadelphia, an exact and perfectly elaborated portrait of an elm tree on a canvas forty feet square. The original tree stands on the everglades, or what was originally the Beaver dams of one of the tributaries of Clearfield Creek, three miles northwest of Cresson.” His description of the American autumn on these mountains is accurate and beautiful: for “a chapter of the beauty of the world for which old continents have no parallel and the earth's surface but one such spectacle. Each tree has a regular series of colors, or hues and shades of color, through which its leaf passes, after the death-stroke of the frost. These are of an endless variety, and of the most extraordinary brilliancy. The solar spectrum is exhausted in this fantastic display of colors.”
Dr. Jackson continued in his minute description of flowers, fruit-trees and vegetables. When he wrote the book he said, “the elk still lingers and the black bear is frequently found.” The red fox evidently was abundant in the cavern and rocks, and the white weasel was found occasionally.
As to the birds and fowl which were native to these hills Dr. Jackson says that the meadow-lark, the blue jay, and the pheasant or ruffed grouse were very common, but the pigeon-hawk, the bald eagle, the fish-hawk, the black-hawk, the golden robin, and the partridge or quail were seldom found, while a mockingbird had not been heard here. Many rattle snakes, but few copperheads, infested the mountains, and among the living creatures of unusual size or age Dr. Jackson records the finding of a snapping-turtle over thirty-eight years old which was twelve inches in length and nine and one-fourth inches in width, and also one which had been marked forty-five years previously. He is willing to record the fact that a trout measuring fifteen inches and weighing two pounds and two ounces was caught in Piney Run in July, 1859.
Dr. Jackson avers that the climate of Pennsylvania is the most equable of the entire Atlantic range, its mean temperature being 47 degrees, or nearly the same as that of Great Britain whose mean latitude is about 54 degrees, while that of Pennsylvania is not 41. The average temperature of summer he stated, is, from tide to mountain range, 72 ½ degrees; mount-
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