TREES IN NATURE 117 



with pinnate leafage that the uninitiate might 

 almost mistake for that of the ash. 



No, the false acacia cannot be our last tree. 

 Yet another must be named. It ought to have 

 been named earlier. But I will not go back 

 and look for a better place for it : to take it up 

 when it has just come to mind will mark the 

 fact that this book does not pretend to be 

 scientific. Our last tree, then, is the mountain 

 ash or rowan. Probably if I had looked for 

 an earlier place for it, I should at least have 

 thought of being so unscientific as to place it 

 with the yew, on account of the similarity of the 

 old beliefs concerning them both. 



One of the best-known appearances of the 

 rowan in art, is the spray of it thrown across the 

 coffin in Landseers picture, "The Shepherd's 

 Chief Mourner". The tree was supposed to 

 be a charm against the evil eye and the ill- 

 intent of witches and other malevolent beings. 

 Evelyn says of it — and this is our last quotation 

 of him whom we might well call worthy — "Ale 

 and beer brewed with these berries, being ripe, 

 is an incomparable drink, familiar in Wales, 

 where this tree is reputed so sacred that there 

 is not a churchyard without one of them planted 



