Cattle and horses are fond of Ash leaves, which were formerly much used for fodder, and still are in some districts; but it is said that to indulge cows in this food is fatal to the production of good butter from their milk. In some country places there is still extant a "Shrew-Ash"--a tree into which a hole has been bored sufficiently large to admit a living shrew-mouse, which has then been plugged in, to die of suffocation. A touch of a leaf from this tree was reputed to cure cramp, but especially that form of it supposed to be caused by a shrew passing over man or beast. Then there was the Ash whose bole had been cleft that it might be a "sovran" remedy for infantile hernia. It is difficult to account for the origin of these ideas, but they are deep-rooted and die hard. John Evelyn remarks of this latter superstition: "I have heard it affirmed, with great confidence and upon experience, that the rupture, to which many children are obnoxious, is healed by passing the infant through a wide cleft in the bole or stem of a growing Ash-tree; it is then carried a second time round the Ash, and caused to repass the same aperture as before. The rupture of the child being bound up, it is supposed to heal as the cleft of the tree closes and coalesces." The origin of the name Ash is uncertain, though many fanciful suggestions have been made in explanation of its meaning. Its Anglo-Saxon form was aesc, a word used by the same people for spear, but that was because their spear-shafts were made of Ash-wood. * * * * * [Illustration: _Pl. 43._ Field Maple.] The Maple (_Acer campestre_). There are a number of Maples in cultivation, but only three of them are commonly met with in the open, and of these one alone is a native. This is the Small-leaved, Common, or Field Maple (_Acer campestre_), a small tree that attains a height of twenty or thirty feet in the tall hedgerow or in the wood, but is most familiar as a mere bush or as a constituent of the low field-hedge. It does not grow to any considerable thickness of bole, so has no importance as timber, but the turner, the cabinet-maker, and the artist in fancy pipes and snuff-boxes, are glad to make use of its fine-grained, pale-brown wood. This is often beautifully veined, especially the wood from the roots, and as it will take a high polish, which brings out these markings plainly, it is a very desirable wood for such purposes. The brown bark gives little clue to the character of the wood it covers, for in young trees it is rough and deeply fissured, though with age it becomes smooth. [Illustration: Field Maple.] [Illustration: _Pl. 44._ Fruits of Sycamore.] [Illustration: _Pl. 45._ Sycamore--summer.]