side, to see the branches hang down. This variety is now become common in the nurseries, but 
they are engrafted, and carry too much the appearance of art. Imitations seldom are successful, 
and none of the weeping trees will ever vie with the Babylonian Willow. 3. With variegated 
leaves, both yellow and white; or gold-striped and silver-striped, as the Nurserymen call them. 
Micheli has some other varieties, from the different shape of the fruit, the size and form of the 
leaves, &c. Nov. gen. 222. 
The English is from the Saxon Msc. Ray says it has its name from the colour of the bark. 
We must be careful not to confound, as some have done, this tree with the Mountain Ash, which 
is totally different from it. This has the epithet excelsior from the loftiness of the trunk—that of 
mountain , from the loftiness of the situation which it delights in. 
Its usual form of flowering is in March and April, sometimes so late as May: of leafing from 
April 22 , to May 15. Both are sometimes much injured by spring frosts. 
The timber of the Ash is next in value to the oak, and in some places equal to it. It is hard 
and tough, and of excellent use to the coach-maker, wheel-wright, and cart-wright, for ploughs, axle- 
trees, fellies, harrows, and many other implements of husbandry; for ladders, oars, blocks for pullies, 
&c. &c. It makes a very sweet fuel, with little smoke, but is apt to crack and fly in burning.— 
Anciently it was in great request for spears. 
For drying herrings no wood is like it, and the bark is good for the tanning of nets: being not 
apt to split and scale, it is excellent for tenons and mortises; also for the cooper, turner and thatcher: 
nothing is like it for palisade hedges, hop-yards, poles and spars; handles and stocks for 
tools, &c. When curiously veined, the cabinet-makers use it, and call it Green Ebony.* 
By a remark in Harrison's description of England, prefixed to Holingshed, chap. xix. edit. 1586. 
it is plain, that the Ash was then esteemed the properest tree for hop-poles.—“ Poles are accounted 
to be their fairest charge (of hops). But sith men have learned of late to sow ashen keies in ash 
yards by themselves, that inconvenience in short time will be redressed."-f- 
Ash-pollards are of great service where fuel is scarce; a few of them will produce many loads 
of lop. The loppings make the sweetest of all fires, and will burn well either green or dry; only if 
the branches are suffered to grow too large, the lopping will proportionably injure the tree.lj; 
If a wood of these trees be rightly managed, it turns greatly to the advantage of its owner; for 
by the underwood, which will be fit to cut every seven or eight years for hoops, or every fourteen 
years for hop-poles, &c. there will be a continual income more than sufficient to pay the rent of the 
ground, and all other charges, and still there will be a stock preserved for timber, which in a few 
years will be worth forty or fifty shillings the tree. 
The best season for felling the ash is from November to February; for if it be done either too 
early in autumn, or too late in the spring, the timber will be subject to be infested with worms, and 
other insects; but for lopping pollards, the spring is preferable for all soft woods. Mr. Boutcher 
recommends February. 
I he ashes of the wood afford very good pot-ash. The bark is used for tanning calf-skin: a 
slight infusion of it appears of a pale yellowish colour when viewed against the light, but when 
looked down upon or placed between the eye and an opake object, it is blue. This blueness is 
destioyed by the addition of an acid, and alkalies recover it again. It will give a good, though not 
beautiful green, to cloths which have been blued.§ 
* Evelyn. 
X Hunter’s Evelyn. 
T Gentlem. Mag. for 1785, p. 599. 
§ Withering and Stokes. 
