is not amiss for the oak joins the idea of strength to beauty; while the ash rather joins the ideas of beauty and elegance. Virgil marks the character of the ash as particularly beautiful,

Fraxinus in sylvis pulcherrima.

The ash generally carries its principal stem higher than the oak, and rises in an easy, flowing line. But its chief beauty consists in the lightness of its whole appearance. Its branches at first keep close to the trunk, and form acute angles with it but as they begin to lengthen, they generally take an easy sweep; and the looseness of the leaves corresponding with the lightness of the spray, the whole forms an elegant depending foliage. Nothing can have a better effect than an old ash hanging from the corner of a wood, and bringing off the heaviness of the other foliage with its loose pendent branches. And yet in some soils, I have seen the ash lose much of its beauty in the decline of age. Its foliage becomes rare, and meagre; and its branches, instead of hanging loosely, often start away in disagreeable forms. In short, the ash often loses that grandeur and beauty in old age, which the generality of trees, and particularly the oak, preserve till a late period of their existence.

We quite agree in this remark, but, at the same time, we must say that we have seen many instances to the contrary. In particular, we might mention a noble ash, one of the most magnificent trees as to form we ever beheld, which grows at Earlsmill, near Tarnawa Castle, the seat of the Earl of Moray, in Morayshire. This tree measures above seventeen feet in girth at three feet from the ground, but it spreads out so much below, that its measurement would be much greater if taken lower down. There is a small hole at the root of it, large enough to admit one man at a time, and on creeping into it, the cavity is found to be so great as to allow three people to stand upright in it at the same moment. The interior has been in this state during the memory of the oldest persons; and yet, until an accident in July, 1824, nothing could be more grand than its head, which was formed of three enormous limbs variously subdivided in bold sweeping lines. The foliage,