pm 
| were it as rare and tender as it is plentiful and 
rowan-tree in Scotland and the north of England, 
and guiekbeam and quickentree in the central 
and southern districts of England ; and till quite 
recently, it was botanically called Sorbus aucu- 
peria. Its ordinary English name of mountain- 
ash, though universal among the educated classes 
of Great Britain, is an outrageous misnomer ; for 
the tree possesses no characteristic property in 
common with the fraxinus and the ornus genera, 
except some remote resemblance in the form and 
disposition of the leaf. 
The stem of this tree is covered with a procth 
gray bark; the branches, while young, have a 
purplish brown bark; the leaves are pinnated, 
and consist of eight or nine pairs of leaflets, and 
a terminating odd one; each leaflet is about two 
inches long, aad half an inch broad toward the 
base, terminates in an acute point, and is sharply 
serrated in the edges; the leaves of young trees 
have on their lower surface in spring a hoariness, 
which disappears about midsummer, but the 
leaves of older trees have little of this hoariness ; 
the flowers are produced at the end of the 
branches, in large bunches, almost in the form of 
| umbels, and they appear in May, are white in 
colour, and consist of five spreading concave 
| petals similar in shape to those of the pear-tree, 
| but smaller; and the fruit consists of roundish 
berries, with a depressed navel on the top, grow- 
ing in large and beautiful bunches, and becoming 
ripe and brilliantly red in autumn. 
This tree grows wild in most parts of Great 
Britain ; and is naturally propagated by birds 
eating its berries, and afterwards dropping the 
contained seeds. In the south and the centre of 
England, it is usually cut down and reduced to 
underwood, and is in consequence seldom seen of 
any considerable size; but in Wales, in the north 
of England, and in the south of Scotland, it very 
generally growsand flourishes to the height ofabout 
30 feet; and throughout the Scottish highlands, 
even in situations nearly 2,000 feet above the 
level of the sea, it often attains a still greater 
height, and usually contributes a most ornamental 
feature to the close-views of gorgeous, grand, and 
thrilling landscapes. “In the Scottish High- 
lands,” remarks Gilpin, “ it becomes a consider- 
able tree. There, in some rocky mountain, 
covered with dark pines and waving birch, which 
cast a solemn gloom over the lake below, a few 
mountain ashes joining in a clump, and mixing 
with them, have a fine effect. In summer, the 
light green tint of their foliage, and in autumn 
the glowing berries which hang clustering upon 
them, contrast beautifully with the deeper green 
of the pines; and if they are happily blended, 
and not in too large a proportion, they add some 
of the most picturesque furniture with which the 
sides of those rugged mountains are invested.” 
The mountain-ash is, beyond all question, a most 
handsome tree both in itself and in good group- 
ing with trees of other form and foliage; and 
hardy, it would undoubtedly be a high and uni- 
versal favourite. But it has suffered great dam- 
age to its fame, both by being generally treated 
as underwood in England, and by being profusely 
and without any sort of foil grown as’ the com- 
mon shelter of cottage-gardens in Scotland. Its 
hardiness, its facility of growth, its accommo- 
dating habits, and certain strong associations of 
superstition, have occasioned it to stand as almost 
the sole guardian of an enormous proportion of 
the smallest and poorest class of Scottish gardens, 
or—what is still worse—have condemned it into 
accompaniment with only the commonest poplars 
and the tree willows. Yet so mighty is its beauty 
that it triumphs over all this mass of vulgariza- 
tion, and takes its place among many of the 
costliest and most tasteful sylvan groupings of 
suburban villa-grounds, and shares the attention 
of the nurseryman, in common with the rhus, the 
robinia, the gleditchia, the ailanthus, and all the 
other deciduous beauties of the arboretum, as 
one of the pet plants of sylvan decoration. 
The mountain-ash has long and undeservedly 
been regarded as of very trifling practical value. 
But it grows well on dry and rocky soils, in ex- 
posed and elevated situations, and might advan- 
tageously be employed for purposes of shelter. 
Its stem, when of healthy growth, is long and 
straight ; its timber is hard, compact, heavy, and 
tough; and its shoots from the stool are gener- 
ally numerous, straight, and long. It appears | 
well worth the planter’s notice as underwood ; it 
would vield large and profitable returns if grown 
for timber upon high, dry, rocky grounds, which 
yield little pasturage, and are ill adapted for any 
other tree; its branches and young stems make 
excellent stakes and hoops; its shoots from old 
stools are well suited for whip-stocks, goads, and 
various agricultural tools; its spray and smaller 
branches, as well as its brushwood, make excel- 
lent fuel; and its timber is commended by the 
wheelwright for being all heart, and, when the 
trees are large, can easily be sawn into planks 
and boards, and devoted to a great diversity of 
uses. But one purpose for which many of the 
peasantry of Scotland still continue to use it— 
the superstitious prevention of evil—ought to be | 
everywhere and most stringently discountenanced. 
Not only are trees grown in the vicinity of cot- 
tages, but branches are hung over doorways, and 
in stables and cowhouses, as spells against the 
power of fairies, witches, and warlocks. ‘This 
fact is a horrific outrage upon the professed 
Christianity of our country; it indicates a dis- 
mally low condition in even the ordinary educa- 
tion and common sense intelligence of a large 
proportion of the people ; and it would harmonize 
far more with the dark heathenism of the pagan 
age of our remote ancestors, than with the re- 
puted enlightenment of Britain in the nineteenth 
century. The whole superstition of the roan-tree, 
in fact, was directly and deeply heathenish in its 
origin; and stumps of the tree may still be seen 
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