BLACK ASH 
abre. The Black Ash does not transplant well and wil! 
flourish only in swampy places, It is considered a tree of 
slow growth and is short-lived. 
YGGDRASIL, THE TREE OF THE UNIVERSE 
It is not within the scope of this volume to enter into any 
extended discussion of the curious myths and traditions that 
among many nations gravely ascribe the descent of the hu- 
man race from trees. The mystical “tree of life” was the 
date palm, the fig, the pine, the cedar, the oak, the elm, the 
ash—varying with the country and the vegetation. 
Virgil in the “ neid,” Book VIIL, says: 
These woods were first the seat of sylvan powers, 
Of nymphs and fauns and savage men who took 
Their birth from trunks of trees and stubborn oaks. 
Juvenal in the Sixth Satire tells us: 
For when the world was new the race that broke 
Unfathered, from the soil or opening oak, 
Lived most unlike the men of later times. 
In the “ Odyssey,” the disguised hero is asked to state his 
pedigree, since he must necessarily have had one. “ For,” says 
his questioner, “belike you are not come of the oak, told of 
in old times, nor of the rock.” 
The most remarkable of all these fables and the best 
known is that of the Tree of the Universe, in the Norse 
mythology, around which have clustered as many theories as 
legends without any definite solution of the subject. 
Ygedrasil, the Tree of the Universe, is generally conceded 
to have been an ash tree. In the old legend it springs from 
the body of Ymir the earth, its trunk rises to the sky, its 
branches overshadow the earth and support the heavens, 
Three roots sustain and nourish this mighty tree. One ex- 
tends into Asgard the home of the Gods; beneath it bubbles 
a fountain with whose waters the tree is sprinkled. By its 
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