THE MAPLE. 
49 
the production of good butter from their milk. In some 
country places there is still extant a “ Shrew-Ash ” — a tree 
into which a hole has been bored sufficiently large to admit 
a living shrew-mouse, which has then been plugged in, to 
die of suffocation. A touch of a leaf from this tree was 
reputed to cure cramp, but especially that form of it supposed 
to be caused by a shrew passing over man or beast. Then 
there was the Ash whose bole had been cleft that it might 
be a “sovran” remedy for infantile hernia. It is difficult to 
account for the origin of these ideas, but they are deep-rooted 
and die hard. John Evelyn remarks of this latter super- 
stition : “ I have heard it affirmed, with great confidence and 
upon experience, that the rupture, to which many children 
are obnoxious, is healed by passing the infant through a wide 
cleft in the bole or stem of a growing Ash-tree ; it is then 
carried a second time round the Ash, and caused to repass 
the same aperture as before. The rupture of the child being 
bound up, it is supposed to heal as the cleft of the tree 
closes and coalesces.” 
The origin of the name Ash is uncertain, though many 
fanciful suggestions have been made in explanation of its 
meaning. Its Anglo-Saxon form was asc, a word used by 
the same people for spear, but that was because their spear- 
shafts were made of Ash-wood. 
The Maple {Acer campestri). 
There are a number of Maples in cultivation, but only 
three of them are commonly met with in the open, and of 
these one alone is a native. This is the Small-leaved, Common, 
or Field Maple {Acer campestre), a small tree that attains a 
height of twenty or thirty feet in the tall hedgerow or in 
the wood, but is most familiar as a mere bush or as a con- 
stituent of the low field-hedge. It does not grow to any 
