Fraxinus 875 



profitable timber tree than any other. The largest that I have seen in the north 

 is one at Lowther Castle, known as Adam's Ash, which is 21 feet 10 inches in girth. 



Lees in Gardeners' Chronicle, November 7, 1874, figures several curiously split 

 and distorted relics of ash trees which existed in the district he knew so well round 

 Worcester ; but does not mention any of extraordinary size. He suggests that such 

 wrecks may often have escaped being converted into firewood, owing to the 

 superstition which formerly prevailed, that rickety children might be cured by 

 passing them through a fissured ash tree ; and relates an instance known to him of 

 the curious superstition, that a similar passage through a cleft ash would induce 

 fertility in barren women. 



White, in \i\^ Natural History of Selborne (Ed. Allen, 1900, p. 266), speaks of a 

 row of pollard ashes at Selborne which had been in former times cleft and held open 

 by wedges while ruptured children were pushed through the aperture, in the 

 belief that they would be cured of their infirmity. He also states that there were 

 then several people living in his parish, who in childhood were supposed to be so 

 cured. He describes an old pollard ash which for ages had been looked on with no 

 small veneration as a " shrew-ash," and whose twigs were, when applied to the limbs 

 of cattle, supposed to cure the pains caused by a shrew-mouse having run over the 

 affected part. A " shrew-ash " was made by boring a hole in the trunk and putting 

 a live shrew into the hole, where it was plugged up with several quaint incantations 

 now long forgotten. 



In Wales I have not seen or heard of any larger than a tree by the slaughter- 

 house in Dynevor Park. Though not very well shaped and somewhat past its 

 prime, I found it in 1908 to be 104 feet by 22 feet 9 inches. 



In Scotland there are also many great ash trees, of which perhaps the largest 

 recorded anywhere has long ago completely decayed. It was described in 

 Walker's Essays, p. 17, as growing in a deep, rich soil, in the churchyard of 

 Kilmalie, and was considered to be the largest and most remarkable tree in Scotland ; 

 and said to measure in 1764 no less than 58 feet in girth at the ground. 

 Another celebrated old tree is in the hotel garden at Logierait, Perthshire, which 

 Hunter* described in 1883 as measuring 47 feet 7 inches at i foot from the 

 ground, and 32 feet 5 inches at 5 feet. It was then completely hollow and 

 covered with ivy, with an opening 5 feet 9 inches wide on one side, in which a 

 summer-house had been made. But the late Sir R, Menzies informed me in 1903 

 that this tree is now very much decayed. 



Strutt, Sylva Scotica, Plate 8, figures a very fine ash tree, at Carnock, 

 Stirlingshire, then in perfect vigour, and said to have been planted about 1596 by 

 Sir T. Nicholson of Carnock. He gives its measurement as 90 feet high by 19 feet 

 3 inches at 5 feet. This tree, however, died and was broken up about 40 years 

 ago. The tallest ash that I have myself measured in Scotland is at Gordon Castle, 

 which is a fine healthy tree in the home park, loi feet high with a bole of 30 feet, 

 which in 1904 girthed 12 feet 6 inches. J. Webster records one at the same place 



' Woods, Forests, and Estates of Perthshire, 545 (1883). 



