_Trash_, to shred or lop.--So said Steevens, alleging that he had met with it in books containing directions for gardeners, published in the time of {567} Queen Elizabeth. I fear his memory deceived him, or why should a man of his sound learning afterwards incline to vail bonnet to the dogmatist Warburton? whose knowledge of dogs, by the way, must have been marvellously small, or he could never have imagined them to overtop one another in a horizontal course. _Overrun_, _overshoot_, _overslip_, are terms in hunting, _overtop_ never; except perchance in the vocabulary of the wild huntsman of the Alps. _Trash_ occurs as a verb in the sense above given, Act I. Sc. 2. of the _Tempest_: "Who t'aduance, and who to _trash_ for over-topping." I have never met with the _verb_ in that sense elsewhere, but overtop is evermore the appropriate term in arboriculture. To quote examples of that is needless. Of it metaphorically applied, just as in Shakspeare, take the following example: "Of those three estates, which swayeth most, that in a manner doth overtop the rest, and like a foregrown member depriveth the other of their proportion of growth."--Andrewes' Sermons, vol. v. p. 177., _Lib. Ang.-Cath. Theol._ Have we not the substantive _trash_ in the sense of shreddings, at p. 542. book iii. of a _Discourse of Forest Trees_, by John Evelyn? The extract that contains the word is this: "Faggots to be every stick of three feet in length, excepting only one stick of one foot long, to harden and wedge the binding of it; this to prevent the abuse, too much practised, of filling the middle part and ends with _trash_ and short sticks, which had been omitted in the former statute." Possibly some of the statutes referred to by Evelyn may contain examples of the verb. In the meantime it will not be impertinent to remark, that what appears to be nothing more than a dialectic variety of the word, namely _trouse_, is of every-day use in this county of Hereford for trimmings of hedges; that it is given by Grose as a verb in use in Warwickshire for trimming off the superfluous branches; and lastly, that it is employed as a substantive to signify shreddings by Philemon Holland, who, if I rightly remember, was many years head master of Coventry Grammar School: "Prouided alwaies, that they be paued beneath with stone; and for want thereof, laid with green willow bastons, and for default of them, with vine cuttings, or such _trousse_, so that they lie halfe a foot thicke."--The Seuenteenth Booke of Plinie's _Naturall History_, chap. xi. p. 513.: London, 1634. _Trash_ no one denies to be a kennel term for hampering a dog, but it does not presently follow that the word bore no other signification; indeed, there is no more fruitful mother of confusion than homonomy. * * * * * _Clamor_, to curb, restrain (the tongue):