344 NATURAL HISTORY 



as usually fell out, where the feat was per- 

 formed with any adroitness at all, the party 

 was cured ; but where the cleft continued 

 to gape, the operation, it was supposed, 

 would prove ineffectual. Having occasion 

 to enlarge my garden not long since, I cut 

 down two or three such trees, one of which 

 did not grow together. 



We have several persons now living in 

 the village, who, in their childhood, were 

 supposed to be healed by this superstitious 

 ceremony, derived down, perhaps, from 

 our Saxon ancestors, who practised it be- 

 fore their conversion to Christianity. 



At the south corner of the Plestor, or 

 area, near the church, there stood, about 

 twenty years ago, a very old grotesque hol- 

 low pollard-ash, which for ages had been 

 looked on with no small veneration as a 

 shrew-ash. Now a shrew-ash is an ash 

 whose twigs or branches, when gently ap- 

 plied to the limbs of cattle, will immedi- 

 ately relieve the pains which a beast suffers 

 from the running of a shrew-mouse over the 

 part aflfected : for it is supposed that a 



