NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 145 



nature, that wherever it creeps over a beast, be it horse, cow, or sheep, 

 the suffering animal is afflicted with cruel anguish, and threatened with 

 the loss of the use of the limb.* Against this accident, to which they 

 were continually liable, our provident forefathers always kept a 

 shrew-ash at hand, which, when once medicated, would maintain 

 its virtue for ever. A shrew-ash was made thus+ : Into the body 

 of the tree a deep hole was bored with an auger, and a poor de- 

 voted shrew-mouse was thrust in alive, and plugged in, no doubt, 

 with several quaint incantations long since forgotten. As the cere- 

 monies necessary for such a consecration are no longer understood, all 

 succession is at an end, and no such tree is known to subsist in the 

 manor, or hundred. 

 As to that on the Plestor 



" The late vicar stubb'd and burnt it," 



when he was way-warden, regardless of the remonstrances of the by- 

 standers, who interceded in vain for its preservation, urging its power 

 and efficacy, and alleging that it had been 



" Religione patrum multos servata per annos." 



I am, &c. 



LETTEE XXIX. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, Feb. 7th, 1776. 



DEAR SIR, In heavy fogs, on elevated situations especially, trees are 

 perfect alembics ; and no one that has not attended to such matters can 

 imagine how much water one tree will distil in a night's time, by con- 

 densing the vapour, which trickles down the twigs and boughs, so as to 

 make the ground below quite in a float. In Newton Lane, in October 

 1775, on a misty day, a particular oak in leaf dropped so fast that the 

 cart-way stood in puddles and the ruts ran with water, though the . 

 ground in general was dusty. 



In some of our smaller islands in the West Indies, if I mistake not, 

 there are no springs or rivers ; but the people are supplied with that 

 necessary element, water, merely by the dripping of some large tall 

 trees, which, standing in the bosom of a mountain, keep their heads 

 constantly enveloped with fogs and clouds, from which they dispense 

 their kindly never-ceasing moisture; and so render those districts 

 habitable by condensation alone. 



Trees in leaf have such a vast proportion more of surface than 

 those that are naked, that, in theory, their condensations should greatly 



* "When a horse in the fields happened to be suddenly seized with anything 

 like a numbness in his legs, he was immediately judged by the old persons to 

 be either planet-struck, or shrew-struck. The mode of cure which they prescribed, 

 and which they considered in all cases infallible, was to drag the animal through 

 a piece of bramble that grew at both ends." BINGLEY. 



t For a similar practice, see Plot's Staffordshire. 



L 



