ipe,
. . . the other kinds are soner ripe, wherefore they be called Abrecox
or Aprecox." Of its introduction into England we have no very certain
account. It was certainly grown in England before Turner's time (1548),
though he says, "We have very few of these trees as yet;"[23:1] but the
only account of its introduction is by Hakluyt, who states that it was
brought from Italy by one Wolf, gardener to King Henry the Eighth. If
that be its true history, Shakespeare was in error in putting it into
the garden of the queen of Richard the Second, nearly a hundred years
before its introduction.[24:1]

In Shakespeare's time the Apricot seems to have been grown as a
standard; I gather this from the description in Nos. 2 (see the entire
passage s.v. "Pruning" in Part II.) and 3, and from the following in
Browne's "Britannia's Pastorals"--

"Or if from where he is[24:2] he do espy
Some Apricot upon a bough thereby
Which overhangs the tree on which he stands,
Climbs up, and strives to take them with his hands."

Book ii. Song 4.

FOOTNOTES:

[23:1] "Names of Herbes," s.v. Malus Armeniaca.

[24:1] The Apricot has usually been supposed to have come from Armenia,
but there is now little doubt that its original country is the Himalaya
(M. Lavaillee).

[24:2] On a Cherry tree in an orchard.

ASH.

_Aufidius._

Let me twine
Mine arms about that body, where against
My grained Ash an hundred times hath broke,
And starr'd the moon with splinters.

_Coriolanus_, act iv, sc. 5 (112).

Warwickshire is more celebrated for its Oaks and Elms than for its Ash
trees. Yet considering how common a tree the Ash is, and in what high
estimation it was held by our ancestors, it is strange that it is only
mentioned in this one passage. Spenser spoke of it as "the Ash for
nothing ill;" it was "the husbandman's tree," from which he got the wood
for his agricultural implements; and there was connected with it a great
amount of mystic folk-lore, which was carried to its extreme limit in
the Yggdrasil, or legendary Ash of Scandinavia, which was almost looked
upon as the parent of Creation: a full account of this may be found in
Mallet's "Northern Antiquities" and other works on Scandinavia. It is an
English native tree,[24:3] and it adds much to the beauty of any
English landscape in