92 S Y L V A BOOK i 



and mortaises : Also for the cooper, turner, and 

 thatcher : Nothing like it for our garden palisade- 

 hedges, hop-yards, poles, and spars, handles, stocks 

 for tools, spade-trees, 6?c. In sum, the husbandman 

 cannot be without the ash for his carts, ladders, and 

 other tackling, from the pike to the plow, spear, and 

 bow ; for of ash were they formerly made, and there- 

 fore reckon'd amongst those woods, which after long 

 tension, has a natural spring, and recovers its position; 

 so as in peace and war it is a wood in highest request: 

 In short, so useful and profitable is this tree, (next 

 to the oak) that every prudent lord of a mannor, 

 should employ one acre of ground, with ash or 

 acorns, to every 20 acres of other land ; since in as 

 many years, it would be more worth than the land 

 it self. There is extracted an oyl from the ash, by 

 the process on other woods, which is excellent to 

 recover the hearing, some drops of it being distill'd 

 warm into the ears ; and for the caries or rot of the 

 bones, tooth-ach, pains in the kidneys, and spleen, 

 the anointing therewith is most soveraign. Some 

 have us'd the saw-dust of this wood instead ofguiacum, 

 with success. The chy mists exceedingly commend 

 the seed of ash to be an admirable remedy for the 

 stone : But (whether by the power of magick or 

 nature, I determine not) I have heard it affirm'd with 

 great confidence, and upon experience, that the rup- 

 ture to which many children are obnoxious, is healed, 

 by passing the infant thro' a wide cleft made in the 

 bole or stem of a growing ash-tree, thro' which the 

 child is to be made pass ; and then carried a second 

 time round the ash, caused to repass the same aperture 

 again, that the cleft of the tree suffer'd to close and 

 coalesce, as it will, the rupture of the child, being 



