I once found a young birch growing on the ledge of a brick bridge, outside the parapet, and some forty or fifty feet from the ground.

It was about four feet high, quite a sapling, and apparently flourishing, though where the roots could find soil it was difficult to discover.
The ash tree is slowly disappearing from many places, and owners of hedgerow and copse would do well to plant ash, which affords a most useful wood.

Ash poles are plentiful, but ash timber gets scarcer year by year; for as the present trees are felled there are no young ones rising up to take their place.

Consequently ash is becoming dearer, as the fishermen find; for many of the pleasure yachts which they let out in summer are planked with ash, which answers well for boats which are often high and dry on the beach, though it would not do if always in the water.

These beach-boats have an oak frame, oak stem and stern-post, beech keel, and are planked with ash.