It is also used for axle-trees, wheel-rings, harrows; and also makes good oars, blocks for pulleys, &c. It is of the utmost value to the husbandman for carts, ladders, &c., and the branches are very serviceable for fuel, either fresh or dry. The most profitable age for felling the Ash, appears to be from eighty to one hundred years. It will continue pushing from stools or from pollards, for above one hundred years.
Though a handsome tree, it ought by no means to be planted for ornament in places designed to be kept neat, because the leaves fall off, with their long stalks, very early in the autumn, and by their litter destroy the beauty of such places; yet, however unfit for planting near gravel-walks, or pleasure-grounds, it is very suitable for woods, to form clumps in large parks, or to be set out as standards. It should never be planted on tillage land, as the dripping of the leaves injures the corn, and the roots tend to draw away all nourishment from the ground. Neither should it be planted near pasture ground; for if the kine eat the leaves or shoots, the butter will become rank, and of little value.
There are many varieties of the common Ash, but that with pendulous branches is probably the best known: it is called the Weeping Ash, and is of a heavy and somewhat unnatural appearance, yet it is very generally admired.
The foliage of the Ash-tree becomes of a brown colour in October.
Like leaves on trees the race of man is found—
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;
Another race the following spring supplies,
They fall successive, and successive rise:
So generations in their course decay,
So flourish these, when those are past away.
Pope.
There are numerous species of the Ash, but these are so rarely to be met with in this country, that it is not necessary to particularize any of them.