XV. 2. THE WHITE ASH. 333 
of the United States, equals ashen timber in elasticity; and its 
hardness and strengih, and other valuable properties, are so 
considerable, that of our species as of that of England, might 
be pronounced the eulogium of Spencer :— 
‘¢The ash for nothing 111.” 
“Tt serves the soldier,” as Evelyn says, (pp. 156-7,) “and 
heretofore the scholar, who made use of the inner bark to write 
on, before the invention of paper. ‘The carpenter, wheelwright 
and cartwright find it excellent for ploughs, axle-trees, wheel- 
rings, harrows, bulls; it makes good oars, blocks for pullies and 
sheffs, (shieves,) as seamen name them. For drying herrings, 
no wood 1s like it, aud the bark is good for the tanning of nets; 
and like the elm, for the same property, (of not being so apt to 
split and scale,) is excellent for tenons and mertices; also for 
the cooper, turner, and thatcher; nothing 1s like it for our garden 
palisade-hedges. hop-yards, poles and spars, handles and stocks 
for tools, spade-trees, &c. In sum, the husbandman cannot be 
without the ash for his carts, ladders, and other tackling, from 
the pike to the plough, spear and bow; for of ash were they 
formerly made, and therefore reckoned amongst those woods 
which, after long tension, has a natural spring, and recovers 
its position; so aS in peace and war it is a wood in highest 
request. In short, so useful and profitable is this tree, next to 
the oak, that every prudent lord of a manor should employ one 
acre of ground with ash to every twenty acres of other land, 
since in as many years it would be more worth than the land 
itself.’’ 
There are three species of ash growing in Massachusetts,— 
the White, the Red, and the Black. The Yellow is found in 
Maine, and may, perhaps, belong to this State. 
Sp. 1. Tue Ware Asa. £. acumindia. Lamarck. 
Figured in Michaux, Sylva, HT, Plate 118. 
The white ash is a graceful tree, rising, in the forest, to the 
height of seventy or eighty feet, with a straight trunk and a 
diameter of three feet or more at the base. On an open plain, 
