ASH TREE.

FRAXINUS.

OLEINE.

POLYGAMIA DIOECIA.

The English name Ash, from the Saxon Esc, is said to have been given to this tree from the colour of its bark.-French, Frêne ; formerly Frai, Fraysse.-Italian, Frassino; on the Brescia, Uza.

THE Common Ash, Fraxinus excelsior, takes its specific name from the loftiness of its trunk: the leaves are pinnate, usually composed of five pair of leaflets; the blossoms grow at the sides of the branches, in loose spikes; they commonly open in March or April, but in cold seasons are sometimes as late as May. Toward the end of April, or the beginning of May, the leaves come out, and fall early in the autumn.

The fruit of the Ash is like the tongues of some birds, therefore they have been called Lingua avis and Lingua passerina by the old apothecaries, who used them in medicine, and Ornithoglossum by others. Our country people usually call them Ash keyes, but others name them Kite keyes. The botanists, from their similarity to the Samera of Columella, or the fruit of the elm, designate them by the name of Samara, and sometimes by that of Pterides, from their winged edges.

A well grown Ash is an elegant object; the bark is smooth and pale coloured; the foliage of a fine dark green, light and graceful. When the branches are pendulous, as is frequently the case, more especially with trees growing by the water-side, it is termed the Weeping Ash.

The Ash is frequently found in old walls and rocks, in the crevices of which it insinuates its roots, and covers the surface with verdure. It is supposed that the seeds are carried into these crevices by the winds.

"The Ash asks not a depth of fruitful mould,
But, like frugality, on little means

It thrives, and high o'er creviced ruins spreads
Its ample shade, or in the naked rock,
That nods in air, with graceful limbs depends."
BIDLAKE'S Year.

"Here amid the brook,

Gray as the stone to which it clung, half root,
Half trunk, the young Ash rises from the rock,
And there its parent lifts a lofty head,

And spreads its graceful boughs; the passing wind
With twinkling motion lifts the silent leaves,

And shakes its rattling tufts."

SOUTHEY'S RODERICK.

The oak itself scarcely serves a greater variety of purposes than does this tree; its wood is hard and tough, and in great request with the coachmaker and wheelwright; it is cut into palisades, hop-poles, and toolhandles:-" in sum," says Evelyn, "the husbandman cannot be without it for his carts, ladders, and other tackling, from the pike to the plow, spear and bow."

-"Tough-bending Ash

Gives to the humble swain his useful plough,

And for the peer his prouder chariot builds.”

DODSLEY.

Evelyn commends the Ash for fuel :-"it is," says he, "of all other the sweetest of our forest fuelling, and the fittest for ladies' chambers." Ash pollards are reckoned very serviceable where fuel is scarce, because the

loppings burn well whether green or dry, and make excellent fires. The ashes of the wood make good potash, and the bark is used for tanning nets and calfskin.

In the north of Lancashire, when grass is upon the decline, Ash-trees are lopped as fodder for the cattle. The leaves have been used to mix with tea; and Miller tells us that in some places the poor people have made great advantage by collecting them. Whether by saving expense to themselves in lessening their consumption of foreign tea, or whether they were employed to collect these leaves for others, is not clear. Common as the use of foreign tea now is, even among the poorest of our peasantry, who, notwithstanding the little nourishment it affords them, obtain it at a great expense, it is said that many persons in China give the preference to our English herbs for the same purpose ;—such is the disposition of mankind to prefer those things least easy of attainment.

Medicines have been prepared from the leaves, the bark, the seeds, and the saw-dust :-" but whether the cure be performed by the power of magic or nature,” says Evelyn, " I determine not." This author tells us that "the seeds pickled tender make a delicate salading."

The Ash has, with some persons, a bad character, as a spoiler of butter. It has been observed, that in those parts of Surrey where the ash grows abundantly, the butter is rank; and this fault is supposed to proceed from the cows eating the young shoots of the tree. "So that in good dairy counties," says Miller, "they will not let an Ash-tree grow." Martyn remarks upon this, that the Romans recommended the Ash for fodder ;-and, continues he, "I have passed much time in a country where Ash was almost the only tree in the hedge-rows, and never observed this rankness in the butter. Cream

is apt to turn bitter at the fall of the leaf, and the reason is supposed to be, that the cattle then pick up decayed leaves, particularly those of the Ash; but it is the same in large low pastures where there are no trees, as in upland enclosures which abound in them."

In some respects the Ash is certainly a mischievous neighbour: the numerous shoots from the root spread so widely abroad near the surface of the earth, that they will not permit any thing else to grow near it; it also impoverishes the land, and the drip of its branches is injurious to grass and corn. It will however grow in the most barren soil, and the most exposed situations, and will bear the beating of the bleak sea-winds, so that it is a good tree to plant near the coast, where few trees flourish.

In the early ages, when the island was overrun with wood, our ancestors very naturally valued trees rather for their fruit than for their timber, and when an oak or a beech sold for ten shillings, the Ash, because it furnished no food, was valued but at fourpence.

"The Edda of Woden, however, holds the Ash in high veneration, and describes man as being formed from it. Hesiod, in like manner, deduces his brazen race of men from the Ash*."

Evelyn mentions, as some remains of the superstitious veneration paid to this tree, that the country people, in some parts of England, split young Ashes, and pass diseased children through the chasm, as a means of curing them. They have another custom equally strange;that of boring a hole in an Ash-tree, and imprisoning in it a shrewmouse: a few strokes given with a branch of

* Martyn's Miller.

the tree is then considered a sovereign remedy for cramps and lameness in cattle, which are ignorantly imagined to be caused by that harmless little creature.

Lightfoot says that, in the Highlands of Scotland, at the birth of an infant, the nurse takes a green stick of Ash, one end of which she puts into the fire, and, while it is burning, receives in a spoon the sap that oozes from the other, which she administers to the child as its first food.

Ash-wood is sometimes curiously veined, and is then highly valued by the cabinet-makers, who give it the name of green ebony. "The woodman who lights upon it," says Evelyn, "may make what money he will of it.” Many persons have told strange stories of the curious figures to be found in Ash-wood. It has been said, that in the house of a gentleman in Oxfordshire, a diningtable, made of an old Ash, represented many figures of men, beasts, and fish; and that in Holland, an Ash, being cleft, discovered, in the several slivers, the forms of a chalice, a priest's albe, his stole, and several other pontifical vestments.

Fancy may play endless vagaries in this way, as it does in a burning fire, or in the ever-changing clouds; twenty different observers may form twenty different ideas of the same object in such speculations; although it may require the aid of a little courtly acquiescence, for one person, at the same minute, to see in the same object a camel, a weasel, and a whale.

Ash-trees do not usually grow very large; but there have been many instances of enormous growth among them. Miller mentions several: we will notice a few of the more remarkable.

"Near Kennety church, in the King's County, is an