THE ASH. 



155 



trunk has long been quite hollow, and a little 

 school was kept in it. There were a few branches 

 remaining in 1808, which were fresh and vigorous. 

 Near Kennity Church, in the King's County, is 

 an Ash, the trunk of which is twenty-one feet ten 

 inches round, and it is seventeen feet high before 

 the branches break out. These are of enormous 

 bulk. When a funeral of the lower class passes 

 by, they lay the corpse down for a few minutes, 

 say a prayer, and then throw a stone to increase 

 the heap, which has been accumulating round the 

 root." 



Sir Thomas Dick Lauder mentions an enor- 

 mous Ash-tree near the house of Bonhill, in Dum- 

 bartonshire, which at four feet from the ground 

 measures thirty-four feet. It is hollow, and in 

 the inside a little room has been fitted up, 

 nine feet in diameter and eleven in height. It 

 is floored and surrounded with a hexagonal bench, 

 on which eighteen people can sit, with a table in 

 the middle ; and above the door there are five 

 leaden windows. The whole trunk, which is a 

 vast mass, is thickly covered with fresh vigorous 

 branches." 



The Great Ash at Woburn, described and 

 figured by Strutt in his Sylva Britannica, is an 

 extraordinary specimen of the size which this tree 

 will attain in favourable situations. It is ninety 

 feet high ; and the stem alone is twenty-eight feet. 

 At the ground it is twenty-three and a half feet 

 in circumference : twenty at one foot, and fifteen 

 feet three inches at three feet from the ground. 

 The diameter of its spread is one hundred and 

 thirteen feet, and it contains eight hundred and 

 seventy-two feet of timber. 



