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FR A 



THE UNIVERSAL HERBAL; 



FR A 



six feet asunder, and the sets three feet distant in the rows. 

 Propagation and Culture. The common Ash propagates 

 itself plentifully by the seeds which scatter in the autumn, so ' 

 that when they happen to fall in places where cattle do not ; 

 come, there will be plenty of the plants come up in the sprang. 

 But where any person desires to raise a quantity of the tre es, 

 the seeds should be sown as soon as they are ripe, and then the 

 plants will come up in the following spring : but if the seeds 

 be not sown till spring, the plants will not appear till the year 

 after; therefore the ground should be kept clean all the sum- 

 mer where they are sown, and not disturbed, lest the seeds 

 should be turned out of the ground, or too deeply buried to 

 grow ; for many are too impatient to wait a year for the growth 

 of seeds ; so they dig up the ground, and thereby destroy the 

 seeds. When the plants come up, they must be kept clean 

 from weeds during the summer, and if they make good pro- 

 gress in the seed-bed, they will be fit to transplant by the 

 autumn ; on this account therefore there should be some 

 ground prepared to receive them, and as soon as their leaves 

 begin to fall they may be transplanted. In taking them up, 

 they should be tenderly treated, in order not to break or tear 

 off their roots : they should be taken up with a spade, and not 

 drawn up, according to the general practice ; for as many of 

 the plants which rise from seeds outstrip the others in their 

 growth, so it is frequently practised to draw up the larger 

 plants, and leave the smaller to grow a year longer before they 

 are transplanted ; and to avoid injuring those that are left, the 

 others are drawn out by hand, whereby many of their roots are 

 torn or broken off; therefore it is much the better way to take 

 all up, little or big, together, and transplant them out, placing 

 the" larger ones in rows together, and the smaller by themselves: 

 the rows should be three feet asunder, and the plants a foot 

 and a half distance in the rows ; in this nursery they may 

 remain two years, by which time they will be strong enough 

 to plant where they are to remain, for the younger they are 

 planted out, the larger they will grow, so that where they are 

 designed to grow large, they should be planted out very young; 

 and the ground where the plants are raised should not be 

 better than that where they are designed to grow, for when 

 they are raised in good land, and afterwards transplanted into 

 worse, they very rarely thrive, so that it is much the best 

 method to make the nursery upon a part of the same land 

 where the trees are designed to be planted, and then a suffi- 

 cient number of trees may be left standing upon the ground, 

 and these will outstrip those which are removed, and will 

 grow to a larger size. Those who live in the neighbourhood 

 of Ash-trees may supply themselves with plenty of self-sown 

 plants, provided cattle be not suffered to graze upon the land, 

 for they will eat off the young plants, and not suffer them to 

 grow ; but where the seeds fall in hedges, or where they are 

 protected by bushes, the plants will come up and thrive. 

 To the above short and imperfect directions of Mr. Miller, it 

 cannot be unacceptable to add the following from Evelyn, 

 Dr. Hunter, and Mr. Boutcher: If you would have a con- 

 siderable wood of Ash at once, prepare your ground as you 

 would for corn, and sow good store of keys, some crab- 

 kernels, &c. with oats : take off your crop of corn in its season, 

 and the year following the ground will be covered with young 

 Ashes, which will either be fit to stand, or, as Mr. Evelyn 

 preferred, to be transplanted for divers years after; and you 

 will find these far better than any you can gather out of the 

 woods, especially suckers which tire worth nothing. The 

 sooner they are removed the better : and Ashes of two years 

 thus taken out of the nursery, will often outstrip those taken 

 out of the hedge : you may keep the keys in sand for a winter 

 before you sow them, m a covered airy place. Gather .the 



seeds or keys from healthy young thriving trees, in October 

 or November ; having prepared the beds, lower them about 

 an inch, by raking some of the earth into the alleys ; sow the 

 seed moderately thick, and then throw the earth back again 

 lightly with a spade, or sift it over them an inch thick, and 

 rake it level. In spring, with a very rr light iron rake, 

 the teeth about an mch asunder, remove the moss, pull up 

 the weeds, and sift a little earth over them again. The 

 second spring, in the first open weather in February, rake 

 off the earth as before very gently, sift fresh over them 

 half an inch thick, ami in March and April the young 

 plants will appear in abundance: in October, sift some 

 coal ashes half an inch thick over them. Next spring prepare 

 s ome beds six feet wide, with a path of two feet between each ; 

 plant all of a size in each bed at one foot square, first shorten- 

 ing the tap-roots, and also the side ones. They must then be 

 planted out into your nursery, in three rows three feet asun- 

 der, and each planted at one foot distance, where they are 

 to remain till they are finally planted out. Mr. Boutcher re- 

 commends the seeds being spread in an airy loft, and turned 

 till dry, which will be in three or four weeks, and then mixed 

 with sand, to be sown the beginning of April, on fresh mellow 

 soil, on beds three and a half feet broad, with alleys eighteen 

 inches, and covered three quarters of an inch deep. The 

 seeds will not appear till the succeeding spring; during 

 this tima the beds must be kept clean, and in February 

 they must be raked over ; if a little rich mould be thrown 

 upon them, it will much promote the growth of the seed- 

 lings. In the following February or March remove them, 

 and plant them in drills eighteen or tweety inches asunder, 

 an d eight or nine inches in the drill. In October remove them 

 again, planting them in lines three and a half feet asunder, 

 and fifteen or sixteen inches in the line, where they may re- 

 main for three years. The trees will now be seven or eight 

 feet high, of a proper size for extensive plantations; where 

 large ones are wanted, remove them every fourth year. 

 Stocks for budding should be planted out in the nursery, a 

 foot asunder, and two feet distant in the rows; when they 

 ai one year old, and about the thickness of a bean straw, 

 they will be of a pioper size for working;: a little after Mid- 

 summer is tlie time for the operation, and care must be taken 

 not to bind the eye too tight; they need not be unloosed be- 

 fore the end of September. In March the head of the stock 

 should be taken off a little above the eye, and by the end of 

 the summer following, if the land be good, they will have 

 made strong shoots : the variegated sorts can be increased 

 only in this manner. 



2. Fraxinus Rotundifolia ; Manna Ash Tree. Leaflets 

 roundish, acutish, doubly serrate, subsessile ; flowers with 

 petals. The shoots of the Manna Ash are much shorter, and 

 the joints closer together, than those of the common Ash ; the 

 leaflets are shorter, with deeper serratures on their edges, 

 and of a lighter green; the flowers come out from the sides 

 of the branches, are of a purple colour, and appear in the 

 spring before the leaves come out. This tree is of humble 

 growth, seldom rising higher than fifteen or sixteen feet M 

 England. The lower parts of the mountains in Calabria 

 abound with the Manna Ash, which grows spontaneously 

 and without any culture, except that the woodmen cut dowe 

 all the strong stems that grow above the thickness of a man'i 

 leg. Towards the end of July, the gatherers of manna mak< 

 an horizontal gash, inclining upward, in the bole of the tree 

 as the liquor never oozes out the first day, another cut ii 

 given on the second, and then the woodman fixes the s 

 of a Maple leaf in the upper wound, and the end of the 

 in the lower one, so as to form a cop to receive the gum 



