172 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



The last line of this stanza leads to the true reading of a 

 stanza in Shakspeare's tragedy of Macbeth. The sailor's wife, 

 on the witch's requesting some chestnuts, hastily answers, 

 ' Arown-tree, witch ! ' — but many of the editions have it, 'aroint 

 thee witch!' which is nonsense, and evidently a corruption."* 



The European Mountain ash is quite a favourite with cul- 

 tivators here, and deservedly so. Its foliage is extremely 

 neat, its blossoms pretty, and its blazing red berries in autumn 

 communicate a cheerfulness to the season, and harmonize 

 happily with the gay tints of our native forest trees. It is 

 remarkably well calculated for small plantations or collec- 

 tions, as it grows in almost any soil or situation, takes but 

 little room, and is always interesting. " In the Scottish High- 

 lands, says Gilpin, " on some rocky mountain covered with 

 dark pines and waving birch, which cast a solemn gloom on 

 the lake below, a few Mountain ashes joining in a clump, and 

 mixing with them, have a fine efiect. In summer, the light 

 green tint of their foliage, and in autumn the glowing berries 

 which hang clustering upon them, contrast beautifully with 

 the deeper green of the pines : and if they are happily blended, 

 and not in too large a proportion, they add some of the most 

 picturesque furniture with which the sides of those rugged 

 mountains are invested." We have seen the Mountain ash 

 here, displaying itself in great beauty, mingled with a group 

 of hemlocks, from among the deep green foliage of which, the 

 coral berries of the former seemed to shoot out ; their colour 

 heightened by the dark back ground of evergreen boughs. 



The American Mountain ash, {Pyrus Americana,) is a 

 native of the mountains along the banks of the Hudson, and 

 other cold and elevated situations in the north of the United 



* Aboretum et Fruticetum, p. 918. 



