124 WAYSIDE AND WOODLAND TREES. 
readily extracted, and renders the tube available for a pea- 
shooter, a pop-gun, or a music-pipe. Such uses have been 
known from remote antiquity — probably one might say from the 
beginnings of the human race. The ancient Greeks called it 
SambYike, from its wood having been used in the making of 
musical instruments. In the north of Britain it is known as 
Bourtree, Bore-tree, or Bottery, from the ease with which this 
clearing out of the pith is effected, and it is pretty clear that the 
more general name of Elder also has relation to the tubular 
shoots. Piers Plowman calls the tree Eller, a name that survives 
in Kent, Sussex, Lincoln, East Yorks, and Cheshire. This word, 
according to Prior, is derived from the Anglo-Saxon eller and 
ellarn, and seems to mean “ kindler ” — “ a name which we may 
suppose that it acquired from its hollow branches being used, 
like the bamboo in the tropics, to blow up a fire.” It is thus 
probable that the housewife got her bellows, the musician his 
pipe, and the schoolboy his pop-gun, all from the same source. 
The stems are coated with a grey corky bark, and the 
younger divisions of the branches show an angular section when 
cut. When old, the wood becomes hard and heavy, and has 
been used as a substitute for Box. The leaf is divided into five, 
seven, or nine oval leaflets with toothed edges. The flower is of 
the form that botanists describe as rotate, that is, the corolla 
forms a very short tube, from the mouth of which five petal-like 
lobes spread flat. This is a quarter of an inch broad, and 
creamy-white in colour, giving out an odour which some persons 
like, but which the writer considers offensive. Large numbers 
of these small flowers are gathered into flat-topped cymes, five 
or six inches in diameter. The primary stalks of these cymes 
are five in number. The flowers are succeeded by small globular 
berries, ultimately of a purple-black hue, and of mawkish flavour, 
which are yet much sought after by country' people for the making 
of Elderberry wine, which they credit with marvellous medicinal 
powers. In truth, the Elder still retains among rustic folk much 
