OLIVE TRIBE 233 



tion, making the soil rich and moist, the Ash will soon overtop the oaks of 

 many years' growth, and will send forth its horizontal roots, whose branches 

 will shortly become covered with fibi'es. In such a soil the roots will extend 

 to a great distance, and form a kind of underground drain, so as to justify 

 the old country proverb, " May your footfall be by the root of an Ash." In 

 such a place the Ash Avill yield its foliage so luxuriantly, that the cattle will 

 come in the heat of noon to lie beneath its shadow, and the rambler in the 

 country in search of wild flowers may seat himself at its trunk to survey the 

 landscape from the greenest and coolest of leafy retreats. 



But these roots of the Ash, so useful by the sides of streams and rivers 

 in supporting the soil of the bank and carrying off the moisture, are very 

 inconvenient on the borders of corn or meadow lands. They check most 

 effectually the growth of the pasture plants, and their fibres prove a hindrance 

 to plough and harrow ; while neither corn nor grass will grow well beneath 

 the shadowy screen or the moisture which, condensing on the leaves, falls in 

 drops on the plants below. The woodland is the place most fitted for the 

 Ash, and there we most frequently find it ; but it will not grow so well near 

 stagnant water. Cattle browse upon such of the branches as they can reach. 

 The Romans prized Ash-leaves for fodder more than modern graziers do. In 

 Lancashire, however. Ash-boughs are lopped off to serve in autumn as food 

 for cattle ; and in Queen Elizabeth's time the practice seems to have been 

 carried on to a great extent in this country ; for the inhabitants of Colten 

 and Hawkshead Fells were highly indignant against the number of forges 

 raised there, because, as they said, these consumed the boughs and leaves 

 which they required for the winter food of their cattle. The leaves are 

 readily eaten by deer, and are said to be used with sloe-leaves in adulterating 

 tea. They are certainly less objectionable for this purpose than most of the 

 ingredients so used, and Willich says that their tonic properties are superior 

 to those of the Chinese leaf. In our country the leaves are very little in- 

 fested by the insect race, frost and time being their two great enemies, 

 leaving them fewer and more scattered ; but on the Continent the foliage is 

 much injured, and rendered of a most disagreeable odour, by the Spanish 

 blister-beetle {Caniharis vesicatmia), which has, when living, an unpleasant 

 scent, and wliicb, dying on the tree, and leaving its remains to crumble to 

 powder, is sometimes inhaled by those who sit beneath the boughs, and pro- 

 duces most serious inflammatory results. On this account the Ash-tree is 

 not in France planted near towns and villages ; but in England this beautiful 

 beetle is too rare to prove an annoyance. The late coming and the early 

 falling of its leaf is a slight disadvantage to the picturesque effect of the 

 tree. 



The pendent winged seeds of the Ash are commonly termed keys, and in 

 Kent are often called spinners, because they sjDin through the air in falling. 

 The Avings are not in pairs, like those of the maple, though like them they 

 have a flattened appendage, which, by floating the seeds on the wind, becomes 

 a great means of their dispersion. This wing has got a twist like that of 

 the blade of a screw-propeller, and this helps the spinner to pass through the 

 air with greater directness, and to reach the earth seed first. The old notion, 

 that when these keys are abundant a severe winter will follow, is still retained 



11.-30 



