Just here, when writing upon the ash tree, it is proper again to allude to that peculiar custom, or superstition. This tree was long held in great veneration even in our own country for its supposed virtue in removing rickets or healing internal ruptures. Newspapers and old magazines record many instances illustrative of the profound faith of many of the country folk in this mode of getting relief, and the method of procedure appears to have been nearly always the same, and akin to the passing of a diseased or polluted person through a human image in the eastern parts of the world. The author of the "Natural History of Selborne" says that in Hampshire a tree was chosen, young and flexible, and its stem being severed longitudinally, the fissure was kept wide open, and the child to be healed, being duly undressed, was passed three times through the aperture. After the operation, the tree was bandaged up and plastered over with loam. It was believed that if the severed parts of the tree united the child and the tree gradually recovered together; if the cleft continued to gape, which could only happen through negligence or want of skill, it was thought that the operation had proved ineffectual. Another account in a newspaper forty years ago says a poor woman applied to a farmer residing in the same parish for permission to pass a sick child through one of his ash trees. The object was to cure the child of the rickets. The mode in which the operation was performed was as follows:--A young tree was split from the top to about the height of a person, and laid sufficiently open to pass the child through. The ceremony took place before three o'clock in the morning, and before the sun rose. The child had its clothes removed. It was then passed through the tree by the woman and received on the other side by some person. This was done three times and on three consecutive mornings; the ash was then carefully bound together. In the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for June, 1804, a letter from a correspondent says: "On Shorley Heath, Warwickshire, on the left-hand side of the road going from Shorley Street to Hockley House, there stands a young ash tree, close to the cottage of Henry Rowe, whose infant son, Thomas Rowe, was drawn through the trunk or body of it, in the year 1791, to cure him of a rupture, the tree being split open for the purpose of passing the child through it. The boy is now thirteen years and six months old. I have this day, June 19th, 1804, seen the ash tree and Thomas Rowe, as well as his father Henry Rowe, from whom I received the above account; and he superstitiously believes that his son Thomas was cured of the rupture by being drawn through the cleft in the said ash tree, and by nothing else."