THE ASH. 9 



the year, among the many colored offspring of the woods, 

 it shrinks from the blast, drops its leaf, and in each scene 

 where it predominates leaves wide blanks of desolate 

 boughs amid foliage yet fresh and verdant. Before its de- 

 cay we sometimes see its leaf tinged with a fine yellow, 

 well contrasted with the neighboring greens. But this 

 is one of nature's casual beauties. Much oftener its leaf 

 decays in a dark, muddy, unpleasing tint." 



The Ash is remarkable for a certain trimness and regu- 

 larity of proportion, and it seldom displays any of those 

 breaks so conspicuous in the outlines of the hickory, 

 which in many points it resembles. The trunk rises to 

 more than an average height before it is subdivided ; but 

 we do not see the central shaft above this subdivision, as 

 in the poplar and the fir. Lateral branches seldom 

 shoot from the trunk, save, as I have sometimes observed, 

 a sort of bushy growth, surrounding it a little below the 

 angles made by the lower branches. It is called in Eu- 

 rope "the painters' tree." But George Barnard, allud- 

 ing to this fact, remarks : " Unlike the oak, the Ash does 

 not increase in picturesqueness with old age. The foliage 

 becomes rare and meagre, and its branches, instead of hang- 

 ing loosely, often start away in disagreeable forms." 



North America contains a greater number of species of 

 the genus Fraxinus than any other part of the globe. 

 But three of these only are common in New England, 

 the white, the red, and the black Ash. The first is the 

 most frequent both in the forest and by the roadsides, the 

 most beautiful, and the most valuable for its timber. All 

 the species have pinnate and opposite leaves, and oppo- 

 site branches in all the recent growth ; but as the tree in- 

 creases in size, one of the two invariably becomes abortive, 

 so that we perceive this opposite character only in the 

 spray. The leaflets are mostly in sevens, not so large 

 nor so unequal as in the similar foliage of the hickory, 

 i* 



