DESCEIPTIVH ENUMEEATION OF TEBES. 57 



the sap from its usual channel and makes the 

 branch monstrous. The wreathed fascia is some- 

 times found in other wood, in the Willow par- 

 ticularly, and in the Holly; but most commonly 

 it is an excrescence of the Ash. I have a fas- 

 ciated branch of Ash, found in the woods of 

 Beaulieu, in New Forest, which is most elegantly 

 twisted in the form of a crozier, I have seen a 

 Holly, also, twisted like a ram's horn. "We have 

 this appearance sometimes in Asparagus. 



It is not uncommon for the seeds of trees, and 

 particularly of the Ash, to seize on some faulty 

 part of a neighbouring trunk, and there strike 

 root. Dr. Plot * speaks of a piece of vegetable 

 violence of this kind, which is rather extraordi- 

 nary. An Ash-key, rooting itself on a decayed 

 Willow, and finding, as it increased, a deficiency 

 of nourishment in the mother plant, began to 

 insinuate its fibres, by degrees, through the trunk 

 of the Willow into the earth. There receiving 

 an additional recruit, it began to thrive and ex- 

 pand itself to such a size that it burst the 



* See Nat. Hist. Oxf., oh. vi. sec. 79. 



