an emblem of the whole world." At any rate the tree of the world, and
the greatest of all trees, has long been identified in the northern
mythology as the ash tree,[5] a fact which accounts for the weird
character assigned to it amongst all the Teutonic and Scandinavian
nations, frequent illustrations of which will occur in the present
volume. Referring to the descent of man from the tree, we may quote the
Edda, according to which all mankind are descended from the ash and the
elm. The story runs that as Odhinn and his two brothers were journeying
over the earth they discovered these two stocks "void of future," and
breathed into them the power of life[6]:

"Spirit they owned not,
Sense they had not,
Blood nor vigour,
Nor colour fair.
Spirit gave Odhinn,
Thought gave Hoenir,
Blood gave Lodr
And colour fair."

This notion of tree-descent appears to have been popularly believed in
olden days in Italy and Greece, illustrations of which occur in the
literature of that period. Thus Virgil writes in the _AEneid_[7]:

"These woods were first the seat of sylvan powers,
Of nymphs and fauns, and savage men who took
Their birth from trunks of trees and stubborn oak."

Romulus and Remus had been found under the famous _Ficus Ruminalis_,
which seems to suggest a connection with a tree parentage. It is true,