4. The use of ash is (next to that of the oak it self) one of the most universal: It serves the soldier ............ & _Fraxinus utilis hastis_, and heretofore the scholar, who made use of the inner bark to write on, before the invention of paper, &c. The carpenter, wheel-wright, cart-wright, for ploughs, axle-trees, wheel-rings, harrows, bulls, oares, the best blocks for pullies and sheffs, as seamen name them; for drying herrings, no wood like it, and the bark for the tanning of nets; and, like the elm, for the same property (of not being so apt to split and scale) excellent for tenons and mortaises: Also for the cooper, turner, and thatcher: Nothing like it for our garden palisade-hedges, hop-yards, poles, and spars, handles, stocks for tools, spade-trees, &c. In sum, the husbandman cannot be without the ash for his carts, ladders, and other tackling, from the pike to the plow, spear, and bow; for of ash were they formerly made, and therefore reckon’d amongst those woods, which after long tension, has a natural spring, and recovers its position; so as in peace and war it is a wood in highest request: In short, so useful and profitable is this tree, (next to the oak) that every prudent lord of a mannor, should employ one acre of ground, with ash or acorns, to every 20 acres of other land; since in as many years, it would be more worth than the land it self. There is extracted an oyl from the ash, by the process on other woods, which is excellent to recover the hearing, some drops of it being distill’d warm into the ears; and for the _caries_ or rot of the bones, tooth-ach, pains in the kidneys, and spleen, the anointing therewith is most soveraign. Some have us’d the saw-dust of this wood instead of _guiacum_, with success. The chymists exceedingly commend the seed of ash to be an admirable remedy for the stone: But (whether by the power of magick or nature, I determine not) I have heard it affirm’d with great confidence, and upon experience, that the rupture to which many children are obnoxious, is healed, by passing the infant thro’ a wide cleft made in the hole or stem of a growing ash-tree, thro’ which the child is to be made pass; and then carried a second time round the ash, caused to repass the same aperture again, that the cleft of the tree suffer’d to close and coalesce, as it will, the rupture of the child, being carefully bound up, will not only abate, but be perfectly cur’d. The _manna_ of Calabria is found to exsude out of the leaves and boughs of this tree, during the hot summer-months. Lastly, the white and rotten dotard part composes a ground for our gallants sweet-powder, and the trunchions make the third sort of the most durable coal, and is (of all other) the sweetest of our forest-fuelling, and the fittest for ladies chambers, it will burn even whilst it is green, and may be reckoned amongst the ἄκαπνα ξύλα. To conclude, the very dead leaves afford (like those of the elm) relief to our cattle in winter; and there is a