It may here be observed that the ash was of old a venerated tree. Hesiod makes it the origin of his brazen men. Among the mysteries of the Scandinavians, the whole human race is of the same origin. From one species of ash the Calabrians gather manna. It exudes in summer from incisions or perforations, which almost necessarily assume, when made and when healed an Ionic form. Another species of ash is poisonous: again connecting it with Sivaic or Kalaic fable. The mountain ash, a tree differing generically, I believe, from the common ash, shares also in the mysterious repute. In days of greater superstition than the present, it was used as a counterspell against witchcraft. If its name of mountain ash has been given to it from its supposed love of elevated regions, it will become more and more connected with Kali, in her character of the "mountain-born, mountain-loving Diana;" who, in one of her characters, corresponds with the obstetric Lucina. A scholar, duly imbued with mysticism, might, haply, trace and connect sundry poetical and widely-spread superstitious allusions to the ash. Moor says: "Only one peculiarity in it occurs to me; this is, that the wood of young ash is as tough, hard, and durable as of old: of seven years as of seventy. This, with a certain class might seem a type or symbol of youth and age. In common with the sycamore, the ash tree bears, and is propagated, by a key, as we and certain other nations call the seed." In our volume on Phallism, in the chapter on the _Crux Ansata_ we have seen something of the mysticism connected with that name and form, and it is not necessary to repeat it here. Moor says: "It might be insufferable to hint at the Kalaic sound in the initial of _Clauis_: and that possibly something astronomical may have been fancied in the configuration of the spots on the singularly disposed black peculiarity of the foliage of the sycamore; such leaves moreover in their exterior form being triunical and bifurcated at their base." "A longitudinal wound in the bark of a tree will primarily assume the Sivaic form--the erect, obeliscal! like the tree itself, symbolic of the _Linga_. Expanded, for a mysterious purpose--and it is curious what a number of such mysterious purposes seem to have occurred to prurient eyes--it is Ionic. Duplicated, when healing and healed, we find it still of like allusion." Moor proceeds: "In rural wanderings I have been struck with the uniformities of the wounds in trees--all, be they recent or healed, incisions or perforations, in sound or hollow trees, exhibiting that almost all-pervading form so mystical in the eye of a Saiva, or a Sakti, or an Ioni jah; and perhaps of Brahmans generally. As such they are borne on the foreheads of Hindus of the present day, as they were of old; and as they probably were also among the Egyptians; and, more of individual or official than sectarial distinction perhaps among the Israelites.