390 THE ELDER TREE. 
there is a species of aphis that feeds on the elder, yet an 
infusion of the leaves proves fatal to various insects which 
infest blighted or delicate plants. 
Medicinally, the plant has been known throughout Europe 
from the earliest periods of our medicinal history. In this 
respect it occupies a conspicuous place in the works of Theo- 
phrastus. The inner bark of the tree is an active cathartic. 
The flowers serve for fomentations and cooling ointments ; 
when dried they make a fragrant but debilitating tea, useful 
in acute inflammation from the copious perspiration which it is 
sure to excite. A wine is also made from the flowers, which, 
in scent and flavour, resembles that produced by the Frontignac 
grapes. Elder-flower water is also employed to impart a 
flavour to some articles of confectionary, and it is esteemed as 
a cooling and refreshing lotion for the skin. The berries 
yield a very large quantity of spirit, and it is said their juice 
is employed to adulterate port wine. Loudon states that in 
different parts of the county of Kent there are fields or 
orchards planted with the elder entirely for the sake of its 
berries, which are brought regularly to market, and sold in 
immense quantities at from 4s. to 6s. per bushel, for the pur- 
pose of making wine, which is much drunk in cold weather in 
London in the houses of the lower classes, mulled as a cordial. 
As a screen-fence in bleak exposures and maritime situa- 
tions the tree is of great value; when the young plant has 
just become established in a deep fertile soil it will often pro- 
duce shoots five and six feet long in one summer, but in in- 
hospitable exposures the points of the shoots become weather- 
beaten ; the tree readily makes new efforts of growth, and 
thus becomes twiggy at the extremities, affording shelter to its 
entire height. It generally rises, under the niost adverse cir- 
cumstances, with a vigour hardly equalled by any other plant. 
In wet situations the success of the tree, for shelter, is much 
assisted by thorough drainage, without which the late-formed 
growths fail to become matured, and consequently suffer from 
the influence of frost. As a nurse for other trees, particularly 
when interspersed throughout the outskirts of plantations in 
