KATUEAIi. HISTOE,Y OF SELBORNE. 
145 
nature, that wherever it creeps over a beast, be it horse, cow, or sheep, 
the suffering animal is afflicted with cruel anguish, and threatened with 
the loss of the use of the limb.* Against this accident, to which they 
were continually liable, our provident forefathers always kept a 
shrew-ash at hand, which, when once medicated, would maintain 
its virtue for ever. A shrew-ash was made thus+: — Into the body 
of the tree a deep hole was bored with an auger, and a poor de- 
voted shrew-mouse was thrust in alive, and plugged in, no doubt, 
with several quaint incantations long since forgotten. As the cere- 
monies necessary for such a consecration are no longer understood, all 
succession is at an end, and no such tree is known to subsist in the 
manor, or hundred. 
As to that on the Plestor 
The late vicar stubb'd and burnt it," 
when he was way-warden, regardless of the remonstrances of the by- 
standers, who interceded in vain for its preservation, urging its power 
and efficacy, and alleging that it had been 
" Religione patrum multos servata per annos." 
I am, &c. 
LETTEE XXIX. 
TO THE SAME. 
Selboene, Feb. 7th, 1776. 
Dear Sir, — In heavy fogs, on elevated situations especially, trees are 
perfect alembics ; and no one that has not attended to such matters can 
imagine how much water one tree will distil in a night's time, by con- 
densing the vapour, which trickles down the twigs and boughs, so as to 
make the ground below quite in a float. In Newton Lane, in October 
1775, on a misty day, a particular oak in leaf dropped so fast that the 
cart-way stood in puddles and the ruts ran with water, though the 
ground in general was dusty. 
In some of our smaller islands in the West Indies, if I mistake not, 
there are no springs or rivers ; but the people are supplied with that 
necessary element, water, merely by the dripping of some large tall 
trees, which, standing in the bosom of a mountain, keep their heads 
constantly enveloped with fogs and clouds, from which they dispense 
their kindly never-ceasing moisture ; and so render those districts 
habitable by condensation alone. 
Trees in leaf have such a vast proportion more of surface than 
those that are naked, that, in theory, their condensations should greatly 
* "When a horse in the fields happened to be suddenly seized with anything 
like a numbness in his legs, he was immediately judged by the old persons to 
be either planet-struck, or shrew-struck. The mode of cure which they prescribed, 
and which they considered in all cases infallible, was to drag the animal through 
a piece of bramble that grew at both ends." — Bingley. 
t For a similar practice, see Plot's Staffordshire. 
L 
