The wood of the white ash is heavy, tough, and strong, and is much used for agricultural implements, tool handles and oars, for the interior finish of houses and in the construction of carriages. Emerson tells of an ash which was felled in Granville many years ago, the wood of which furnished three thousand rake stalks. The tree from which I took the following photograph, stands on a farm in Sterling, Massachusetts, and measures over fourteen feet in circumference, five feet from the ground. This trunk illustrates the massive strength which gives the ash its one æsthetic quality. [Sidenote: Red or Downy Ash _Fraxinus pennsylvanica_] _This tree resembles the white ash, but is distinguished from it by the down on the recent shoots. It is a smaller tree than the white ash, more spreading in shape. The twigs are less coarse and branch more frequently, with less space between the buds,—shorter internodes,—on shoots of the same age. Buds inconspicuous, smaller and blacker than those of the white ash. Bark closely furrowed, like that of the white ash. Leaf-scars opposite._ The red ash is much less coarsely moulded than the white ash, and in its leafless season, particularly, the contrast between its branches and those of the white ash is plainly seen. The fissures in the bark of the red ash seem a little finer and nearer together than those of the white ash bark on trees of the same age. The soft down on the recent shoots remains through the winter; and this, with the finer twigs, which branch more frequently, and the smaller, darker buds, makes the tree easily distinguished from the white ash in winter,—more easily even than in summer. The staminate flowers of the red ash are afflicted by mites in the same way as those of the white ash, producing unsightly clusters which hang on the tree all winter. The wood is much less valuable than that of the white ash. [Sidenote: Black Ash _Fraxinus nigra_] _A slender tree, 40 to 70 feet high. Trunk dark gray, often disfigured with knobs. The buds are black, and the young shoots greenish. Coarse twigs; opposite leaf-scars._ The black ash is distinguished from the white and red ashes by its darker buds and by having a less pinched, flattened appearance at the nodes on the stem. It grows throughout New England in swamps, in wet woods, and in moist, muddy ground near rivers. In the woods its trunk is found frequently without branches to a great height, and Emerson calls it the most slender deciduous tree to be found in the forest. It is sometimes seventy or eighty feet high, with a trunk scarcely a foot in diameter. The wood of the black ash is heavy but not strong. It is used for fences, for the interior finish of houses, and, after being separated into thin strips, it is used in making baskets and the bottoms of chairs. Its sap was an old remedy for earache, obtained by holding a green branch before the fire. The specific name, _nigra_, refers to the color of the buds. [Sidenote: European Ash