148 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
thing placed in the spring becomes as white as the film within an 
egg-shell. As it is said in the 'Voluspa' (a Mythic-cosmogonic 
poem, the song of the Prophetess) — 
' An Ash know I standing, 
Named Yggdrasill 
A stately tree sprinkled 
With water the purest ; 
Thence come the dewdrops 
That fall in the dales ; 
Ever blooming, it stands 
O'er the Urdar-fountain.' 
" The dew that falls thence on the earth men call honey-dew, and 
it is the food of the bees. The fowls are fed in the Urdar-fount ; 
they are called swans, and from them are descended all the birds 
of this species." 
The foregoing description of the Ash of the Edda, alluded to by 
Professor Max Miiller, I have compiled from Northern Antiquities 
. . . translated from the French of M. Mallet, by Bishop Percy. 
New Edition . . . with a Translation of the Prose Edda from 
Original Old Norse Text. . . . By I. A. Black well, Esq. . . . 
London. Henry G. Bohn. . . . 1859. See pp. 395-413. 
V. The Physical and Chemical Qualities of the Ash. 
Seeing, then, that the Ash may be said to be famous in all lands 
and in all times, it is natural to ask what are its physical and 
chemical qualities'? and did it through them, or either of them, 
force itself on man's attention 1 
1. Character of the Common Ash, {Fraxinus excelsior, Will.): — 
" The ash," says the author of the article Eraxinus, in the Fenny 
Cyclopaedia, x., 454-5, " is one of the most useful of our British 
trees on account of the excellence of its hard tough wood, and the 
rapidity of its growth. In its appearance too it is singularly grace- 
ful for a European tree. . . . The principal objection to the ash is 
the injury it does to the plants which grow in its neighbourhood, 
by rapidly exhausting the soil of all its organizable materials. In 
consequence of this few plants will thrive, or even grow very near 
it ; and hence the impropriety of the common practice of planting 
the ash in hedgerows ; the extent of its roots may always be dis- 
tinctly traced by the languor and paleness of the crops that stand 
near it." 
