148 HISTORY OF FRUITS. 



The buds and the young tender shoots are greatly ad- 

 mired as a pickle. 



The leaves of the elder-tree are often put into the sub- 

 terraneous paths of moles, to drive those noxious little 

 animals from the garden. If fruit-trees, flowering shrubs, 

 corn, or other vegetables, be whipped with the green 

 leaves of the elder branches, it is said that insects will 

 not attach to them. An infusion of these leaves in water 

 is good to sprinkle over rose-buds, and other flowers 

 subject to blights and the devastations of caterpillars. 



The wood of old elder-trees is so hard, and takes so 

 good a polish, that it is often used as a substitute for the 

 box-tree. From its toughness, it is used for tops for 

 fishing-rods ; needles for weaving nets, butchers' skewers, 

 &c. It was used by the Romans to make pipes and 

 trumpets, as Pliny says, " the shepherds are thoroughly 

 persuaded that the elder-tree, growing in a byplace out of 

 the way, and where the crowing of cocks from any town 

 cannot be heard, makes more shrill pipes and louder 

 trumpets than any other." The parsley-leaved elder was. 

 thought, by Miller and others, to have been a distinct 

 species of this tree ; but experience teaches us that it is, 

 only a variety, as on sowing the seeds they have been, 

 found uniformly to produce only the common elder. 



