208 TREES 



the tree's name to any one who visits its restricted terri- 

 tory. In rich soil, three leaflets are occasionally de- 

 veloped. 



The European Ash 



F. Excelsior, Linn. 



The European ash is the large timber ash from the 

 Atlantic Coast of Europe to western Asia. The earliest 

 writers have ranked its wood next to oak in usefulness. It 

 was known as "the husbandman's tree." Its uses were 

 listed at interminable length, for "ploughs, axle-trees, 

 wheel-rings, harrows, balls . . . oars, blocks for 

 pulleys, tenons and mortises, poles, spars, handles, and 

 stocks for tools, spade trees, carts, ladders. ... In 

 short, so good and profitable is this tree that every prudent 

 Lord of a Manor should employ one acre of ground with 

 Ash to every twenty acres of other land, since in as many 

 years it would be more worth than the land itself." 



The sapHngs, cut when three to six years old, made ex- 

 cellent fork and spade handles on account of the toughness 

 and pliability of their fibre. Crates for china were made 

 of the branches. Steamed and bent, this wood lent itself 

 to the making of hoops for barrels and kegs. The cutting 

 off of the main trunk set the roots to sending up a forest of 

 young shoots, ready for cutting again when they reached 

 the size for walking-sticks and whip-stocks. 



Quite independent of its lumber value, but possibly 

 correlated with it, was the great reputation the ash tree 

 achieved in the myths and superstitions of widely sep- 

 arated peoples. In south Europe, tradition declared that a 

 race of brazen men sprung from the ash tree. In the North, 

 the Norse mythology made Igdrasil, the ash, the "World 



