152, OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 
The ash (Fraxinus excelsior) is one of the 
most graceful of our forest trees. In grace and 
elegance it must, indeed, at times yield to the 
birch when growing on the mountain side, or by 
the edge of a lake or brook; but the ash has, 
both in the shape of its crown of foliage and in 
the delicate bluish-green colour of the leaves, 
attractions which distinguish it above most of 
our other trees. Cobbett gave a due appreciation 
of the ash when he wrote, in his Rural Rides 
through Huntingdon, that, ‘In the hedge-rows, 
in the plantations, everywhere the ash is fine. . . . 
We have no tree that attains a greater height 
than the ash, and certainly none that equals it 
in beauty of leaf. It bears pruning better than 
any other tree. Its timber is one of the most 
beautiful; and as underwood and firewood it far 
excels all others of English growth.’ 
It is now much too valuable for fuel, and in 
any case beech is better for that purpose. But 
ash is at the present moment one of the most 
profitable trees that can be grown. The best 
ash, that of Nottingham and Leicester, fetches, 
dressed and ready for coach-builders, up to 
41 per ton, or nearly 4s. 5d. a cubic foot. 
