374 THE MOUNTAIN ASH. 
avenue, its appearance and habits of growth remain more 
fixed and unchangeable than that of most other trees. 
The mountain ash is raised from the berries, which ripen in 
autumn, when they should be collected and mixed up with 
sand or light sandy earth in a pit, where they should be turned 
over every second or third month, in order that the berries 
may become regularly decomposed. They should be sown 
during the second winter, or early in the second spring, after 
they are collected. The soil should be rich and friable, and 
the seeds should be spread on the beds and regulated with a 
rake, with the view of the plants arising about two or three 
inches asunder. At the age of two years the plants should be 
removed from the beds into nursery lines, after pruning off the 
extremities of their straggling roots ; the lines should be two 
feet distant, and the plants six inches apart. After remaining 
two years in nursery lines, the plants are commonly from four 
to five feet high, when they may either be planted out per- 
manently or transplanted into greater space, to adapt them to 
situations where, on being planted, they will form an imme- 
diate effect. 
Some of the finest trees of the species in the north are pro- 
duced in Badenoch, Inverness-shire. The best of these, and 
perhaps the finest tree of the species in Britain, stands at 
the west entrance gate on the estate of Belleville. It is fully 
forty feet high, with a very large well-balanced head, and a 
handsome trunk from eight to nine feet in circumference. 
The tree is indigenous on the estate, but very likely it had 
been placed in its present situation by Macpherson, celebrated 
for his translation of the “Ossian” and other Gaelic poems, who 
purchased and improved the estate towards the end of last 
century. The tree affects a cool'soil and a moist atmosphere. 
It attains to the age of many centuries, and in open situations 
it is seldom attacked by disease. Few trees are superior to it 
in an ornamental point of view; and its berries are the choice 
food of our singing birds, particularly the thrush and the 
blackbird. 
The tree forms an excellent coppice, and as such furnishes 
