146 



A DISCOURSE 



BOOK I. planted so much of this one sort of timber in his life-time, as hath 

 ^^'^'^^^ been valued worth fifty thousand pounds to be bought. These are 

 pretty encouragements for a small and pleasant industry. That there 

 is a lower and more knotty sort, every husbandman can distinguish. 



The keys, or tongues, being gathered from a young thriving tree when 

 they begin to fall, (which is about the end of October, and the ensuing 

 month,) are to be laid to dry, and then sowed any time betwixt that and 

 Christmas ; but not altogether so deep as your former masts. Thus they 

 do in Spain, from whence it were good to procure some of the keys from 

 their best trees. A very narrow seminary will be sufficient to store 

 a whole country ; they will lie a full year in the ground before they 

 appear, therefore you must carefully fence them all that time, and have 

 patience ; but if you would make a considerable wood of them at once, 

 dig or plough a parcel of ground, as you would prepare it for corn, and 



This GENUS of plants, in the Linnsean system, is ranked in the class and order Polygamia 

 Dioecia, the polygamy being upon two distinct plants. 



The flowers of the Ash begin to open about the sixteenth of April, and about the twenty- 

 second they are in full blow. The leaves, also, of some of these trees growing in favourable 

 situations, will, by this time, be out; though others will not show their foliage till the 

 middle of May. 



The common Ash is easily propagated from the keys, for which consult the directions 

 given in p. 42. The foreign kinds may also be raised from seeds, when they can 

 be procured from abroad : Budding, however, is the general method ; so that those who 

 have not a correspondence in the countries where they grow naturally, should procure 

 a plant or two of a sort, and should raise young Ashes of the common sort for stocks. — 

 These stocks should be planted out in the nursery, a foot asunder, and two feet distant 

 in the rows. When they are one year old, and grown to be about the thickness of a bean- 

 straw, they will be of a proper size for working. A little after Midsummer is the time 

 for the operation ; and care must be observed not to bind the eye too tight. They need 

 not be unloosed before the latter end of September. In March, the head of the stock 

 should be taken off a little above the eye ; and, by tlie end of the summer following, if the 

 land be good, they will have made strong shoots. It is in this manner only that the 

 variegated kinds can be increased ; for their keys, when sown, invariably produce the 

 common green-leaved Ash in return. 



The timber of the Ash (the Oak only excepted) serves for the greatest variety of uses 

 of any tree in the forest. Though a handsome tree, it ought by no means to be planted 

 for ornament in places designed to be kept neat, because the leaves fall off, with their 

 long stalks, very early in the autumn, and by their litter destroy the beauty of such places. 

 \ Although this tree should not be planted near gravel-walks and pleasure grounds, it is well 



