322 A SKETCH OF THE BOTANY OF 



its having at any time been indigenous to our district * ; but it is 

 different with the ash, which, in my opinion, still occurs truly 

 wild in some of our deansf. Dr WALKER $, the best of all au- 

 thorities in a question of this kind, enumerates it amongst our 

 native trees; and in the names of villages, conferred certainly 

 previous to the existence of plantations, we find good evidence of 

 the fact. Thus, in the adjoining county of Roxburgh, we have 

 Ash-trees, Ashie-bank, and Ashie-burn ; and in Selkirk, Ash-kirk, 

 names obviously bestowed from the circumstance of the ash 

 having grown there more abundantly or luxuriantly than else- 

 where. The yew, a true native both of England and of Scot- 

 land, can only claim a doubtful place among the original trees of 

 Berwickshire ; for the few that now occur are always near the 

 old residences of the gentry. From the vulgar superstitions 

 which have long been associated with the aspen, it may be pre- 

 sumed to be indigenous ; and the Populus canescens occurs in a 

 patch of natural wood in the neighbourhood of Longformacus. 

 Of the black and white poplars, I can offer no evidence for their 

 being enumerated amongst our wild trees. The crab-apple and 

 the elder are common in our district, the former in every hedge, 

 and the latter near villages, hamlets, and monastic ruins ; yet it 

 would be difficult to point out a single site where they are cer- 

 tainly wild. If introduced, as is not improbable, they are now, 

 however, perfectly naturalized, and owe their preservation in 

 their present habitats, the one to its beauty and use, the other 

 to the regard paid it on account of its reputed medicinal and 



* Dr WALKER says, " the beech was not copiously planted in Scotland, till a 

 little before and after the Revolution; but a few, he conjectures, were planted as a 

 curious foreign tree, not later than between 1540 and 1560." 



f Item of expenditure for Holy Island Priory in 1385-6: " Thirteen ashes for 

 ploughs and carts, 19s. 6d." These ashes must surely have been of native growth. 

 In Dr MACCULLOCH'S Highlands and Western Islands, the ash is mentioned as 

 growing in very many places where it must be indigenous. See also MACGILLI- 

 VRAY in the Edin. New Phil. Journ. for July 1830, p. 189. 



Essays on Natural History, by JOHN WALKER, D. D. Edin. 1808, 8vo. an 

 excellent work, much neglected by those who have subsequently written on the 

 Flora of Scotland. 



" I have been informed by persons well acquainted with our marshes, that the 

 yew makes a part of the fossil wood of the north of England." GOUGH in Man- 

 chester Mem. ivr p. 10. 



