PROFITABLE TIMBER TREES 69 



tree with a character which is more easily recognised 

 than described. In short, the general appearance of the 

 tree is more pronounced than minute details, although this 

 difference, owing to the prevalence of intermediate forms, 

 may not be detected by the untrained eye. But that this 

 difference is not entirely external is proved by the fact 

 noticed by several observers from time to time, namely, that 

 this species is rarely attacked by the oak-leaf roller moth. 

 It is evident that botanical characters do not concern a 

 caterpillar to any appreciable extent, and that this dis- 

 criminative taste must be due to some peculiarity in the 

 flavour of the two species which mark them out as distinct, 

 and the insect thus unconsciously supports the botanist and 

 forester. 



Why its numerical strength should fall so far short of 

 the pedunculate variety it is difficult to say. It is much 

 more plentiful in certain districts than in others, but the same 

 thing may be observed in other genera of plants. In the 

 case of cultivated woods the preference evinced by all the 

 older writers on forestry for pedunculata may be responsible 

 for a certain amount of selection in the collection of the 

 acorns when sowing was the prevailing practice, and when 

 both operations were probably performed by the same 

 person. 



THE ASH (Fraxinus excelsior). 



Next to the oak, the ash probably comes as the most 

 widely distributed of British trees. Both in hedgerow, copse, 

 and natural woodland we invariably find it more or less 

 represented, and on high-lying chalk or limestone it is 

 probably more common than the oak. Unlike the latter, 

 however, its life is more limited, and we rarely find surviving 

 individuals of these trees which helped to form the forests of 

 two or three hundred years back, it being more liable to 

 internal decay and fungoid attack than the oak. The uses 

 of ash in olden times seem to have been more of an 

 agricultural nature than most trees. Its toughness, lightness, 

 and elasticity fitted it for the manufacture of agricultural 

 tools and implements, while the pikes and lances of our 



