| 274 ASPLENIUM. 
| 
| a very handsome species, growing nine inches 
|| high on walls; the Rheetian and the royal, also 
very handsome species, growing six inches high 
on rocks; and the thicket aspidium, a rare and 
recently-discovered species, growing nine inches 
high on shady rocks. One of the most remark- 
able of the exotic species, and indeed of the whole 
family of ferns, is the celebrated Scythian lamb, 
the topic of so many fables, Aspidium Baromez. 
“ Although,” says the editor of the Encyclopaedia 
of Plants, “it is often brought in a fresh state to 
the markets of Macao as an article of medicine, 
no plants have ever reached this country alive. 
Its name has arisen from the resemblance which 
its brown hairy rootstalk bears to a little rufous 
dog couching; and the belief in its animal na- 
ture has been confirmed by the colour of the 
juice, which is of a rich blood colour, and soon 
becoming thick by exposure to the air. It is 
needless to add that the stories about no plant 
being able to grow near it are mere fables. 
Kempfer says that borannekl is the name which 
the people on the borders of the Caspian Sea 
give to a kind of sheep of that country.” 
ASPLENIUM,—popularly Spleenwort. An ex- 
tensive genus of ferns, of the polypody tribe. 
The plants of some of the species were formerly 
regarded as specifics in all diseases of the spleen ; 
and they derive from this circumstance both 
their botanic and their popular names. About 
160 species are known to botanists; and about 
60 of these are either indigenous in Great Bri- 
tain, or have been introduced from foreign coun- 
tries. Five or six of the latter have undivided 
fronds: two have angular, lobed, divided fronds ; 
one has tripinnate leaves; and all the others 
have either pinnate, bipinnate, or bipinnatifid 
fronds. The-chief of the British species are the 
maidenhair, growing six inches high on shady 
rocks ; the northern and the sea, six inches high 
on rocks; the alternate-leaved, six inches high in 
Scotland; the fountain, often called an aspidium 
and a polypody, and very handsome in form, nine 
inches high in England ; the laneolate ; the 
wall-rue; and the black adiantum. | 
‘| ASS,—scientifically Hywus Assinus. A well 
known quadruped, of the horse genus of the 
thick-skinned class of animals. The variety of 
ass generally known in Great Britain and Ire- 
land, is of a very inferior character; and aifords 
-a very inadequate representation of either the 
best domesticated varieties of other countries, 
or the most spirited and symmetrical of the 
known varieties of the wild ass. Our popular 
notions of this animal—based principally on 
contempt, and prompting chiefly to neglect and 
cruelty—are a gross outrage upon common sense, 
natural history, and even religious feeling, and 
are wofully inconsistent with the enlightenment 
of the nineteenth century, and the boasted civil- 
ization of the British people. The ass—except 
in so fir as he is starved and thrashed and half- 
| butchcred out of his natural disposition—pos-. 
Fr 
ASS. 
sesses scarcely a trace of the disagreeable temper 
which popular belief assigns to him, and is dis- 
tinguished by several most useful habits and 
most desirable properties for which not one Pri- 
ton in twenty will give him a particle of credit; 
he figures very anciently, most extensively, and 
not a little respectably, in the history of the 
civilized world; he was held in high esteem by 
several ancient and enlightened nations, whose 
opinions on most other matters connected with 
civilization are respected by posterity; he was 
domesticated ‘and generally useful before either 
the horse or the dog, and was long retained in 
the service of the peaceful arts after the horse 
became subservient to the purposes of war; and, 
above all, he figures with considerable frequency 
and with uncommon interest in the Sacred Scrip- 
tures, and is there exhibited to us in connexion 
with one of the most simply sublime and beauti- 
fully affecting passages in the personal history of | 
our Redeemer. The Christian who thinks con- 
temptuously of the ass, loses instruction out of 
various parts of Scripture ; the farmer who 
thinks meanly of him, deprives himself of much 
profitable service in draught labour upon his 
farm; and the mere hobnail or schoolboy who 
sneers at the ass’s alleged stubbornness and stu- 
pidity is, in the popular use of the word, a greater 
ass than the animal he despises. 
In Western Asia, the ass was domesticated long 
before the commencement of profane history, and 
has ever since been held in high esteem, and con- 
tinues to be carefully bred and reared; yet in 
Europe, it was little known till a considerable 
period after the commencement of profane his- 
tory, and has never, except in limited districts, 
attained its due situation of consequence. In 
the time of Aristotle, the ass was unknown in 
Pontus, in Scythia, and in the great territory 
which now constitutes Germany and France; | 
and so late as the time of Elizabeth, it was ex- 
tremely rare in England. Wherever the horse 
preceded him as a domestic animal, the ass found 
difficulty in obtaining a fair degree of favour, or 
even honest consideration of his claims; his in- 
feriority to the horse in size and strength in- 
stantly excited strong depreciation, and seems to 
have originated the unjust contempt in which he 
continues to be held; and his deprivation of all 
méans for attaining improvements in breed, cor- 
responding to the improvements in that of the 
horse, has hitherto had the appearance of justi- 
fying, in a large degree, his stern exclusion from 
favour. “ He is the sport, the butt, and the 
drudge of the vulgar, who, without the least 
thought or concern, drive him along with a cud- 
gel, beating, overloading, and tiring him. We 
do not remember, that, if there were no horses, 
the ass would be considered, both with regard to 
himself and us, as the most useful, most beauti- 
ful, and most distinguished of animals. Instead 
of being the first, he is now the second; and trom 
this accident alone, he is held in no estimation, 
