It was probably owing to the high value that the Scots had learnt to set upon ash timber, both for military and domestic use, that this tree was more commonly planted than any other in compliance with the statute of James II. (fourteenth Parliament, cap. 80), requiring every landowner to cause his tenants to plant and maintain trees in number proportioned to the extent of their holdings. This was in 1424; in 1573 it was re-enacted, along with "sindrie louabil and gud Acts," by 6 James vi. c. 84; whereof the effect may still be traced in the landscape of many parts of Scotland in the shape of old ash trees standing round farmhouses and other homesteads. Often, where two or more farms have been thrown into one, the trees remain long after the disused buildings have been removed. Belief in the medicinal virtues of the ash was very general in early times, probably derived from the Orient, where the manna ash (_F. ornus_) abounds. Yet Pliny, who recognised the difference between the two species, not only recommended extract of the common ash as a draught to cure snake-bites and as superior to any other remedy when applied to ulcers, but solemnly affirms that he has himself proved that if ash leaves are laid in a circle round a snake and a fire, the snake will crawl into the fire rather than touch the leaves. Even sage John Evelyn recommended ash extract to cure deafness, toothache and other ailments, and, later still, Gilbert White of Selborne describes the superstitious practice of passing sickly children through the stems of ash-trees, split for that purpose, in the belief that, if the clefts grew together again after the wedges were removed, the patients would recover. For household purposes, ash provides excellent firewood, which burns as well green as dry. The tallest ash measured by Mr. H. J. Elwes in 1907, stood 146 feet high, and was 12 feet 7 inches in girth 5 feet from the ground. This fine tree is growing with many others of about equal height in Lord Darnley's park at Cobham, in Kent. The tallest ash recorded in Scotland was one at Mount Stuart, in the Island of Bute, stated to have been 134 feet high in 1879; but this has now disappeared. The loftiest certified by Messrs. Elwes and Henry as still standing is a great tree at Dalswinton, in Dumfriesshire, which, in 1904, stood 110 feet high, with a girth of only 8 feet 3 inches. Sir Archibald Buchan-Hepburn, however, claims to have one at Smeaton Hepburn measuring 124 feet in height and 11 feet in girth in 1908.