COMMON LOCUST. - 19'J 



oak in sixty years, from the time of planting. He states that posts made of tlie 

 locust wood have stood exposed to the weather, to his certain knoivledge^ for 

 eighty or a hundred years before they began to decay. He recommends the 

 locust-tree to be planted in a poor soil. 



In February, 1793, the national convention of France decreed that an impres- 

 sion of " L" Annuaire du Cultivateur" should be struck off, and distributed in the 

 various departments of that country, the committee of public instruction thinking 

 it worthy of a place among the elementary books intended for the use of the 

 national schools. In this work, each day in the year is marked by one or more 

 natural productions, or their attendant phenomena; and the 6th of May, (14"" 

 Prairial,) was consecrated to the Robinia pseudacacia, and a notice given of its 

 appearance, propagation, culture, and uses. 



Dr. Pownal, in "Young's Annals of Agriculture," remarks that "the locust 

 wood which is used in America for ship-building, trenails, and posts, has com- 

 monly been grown in barren, sandy, or light soils ; and that in England, where 

 it is generally planted in rich soils, and in sheltered situations, the tree may, 

 probably, outgrow its strengih ; and thus the branches may become so brittle as 

 to be easily broken by the winds : while the wood will be less hard and tena- 

 cious, and in all probability, much less durable than in America." He therefore 

 recommends planting the locust, in England, only on poor soils, when it is 

 intended to employ the timber for useful purposes. 



In the year 1803, a work was published in Paris, entitled " Lettre sur le 

 Robinier," by M. Francjois de Neufchateau, containing, in substance, all that 

 had been previously published on the subject in France, a translation of which 

 occupies the first one hundred and fifty-six pages of Wither' s " Treatise on the 

 Acacia." 



In the year 1823, an extraordinary excitement was produced in England con- 

 cerning this tree, by William Cobbett, who resided in America from 1817 to 

 1819, and chiefly occupied himself in farming and gardening, on Long Island, 

 near New York ; and during that period, as he tells us in his " Woodlands," pub- 

 lished in 1825 to 1828, that he was convinced that nothing in the timber way 

 could be of so great a benefit as the general cultivation of this tree." " Thus 

 thinking," continues he, "I brought home a parcel of the seeds with me in 1819, 

 but I had no means of sowing it till 1823. I then began sowing it, but upon a 

 very small scale. I sold the plants ; and since that time I have sold altogether 

 more than a million of them ! " Elsewhere, in the same work, he more especially 

 directed attention to this subject, urging, in his clear and forcible manner, the 

 immense importance of this tree in ship-building; and he was the means of 

 thousands of it being planted in various parts of Britain. The name of locust. 

 as applied to this tree, before Cobbett' s time, was but little known in England, 

 and many persons, in consequence, thought it was a new tree. Cobbett had a 

 large kitchen-garden behind his house at Kensington, which he converted into a 

 nursery ; and he also grew trees extensively on his farm at Barnes, in Surry. 

 Although hundreds of the Robinia pseudacacia stood unasked for in the British 

 nurseries, the "locust plants," which every one believed could only be had gen- 

 uine from Mr. Cobbett, could not be grown by him in sufficient quantities to sup- 

 ply the demand. He imported the seeds in tons ; but when he fell short of the 

 real American ones, he procured others, as well as young plants, from the Lon- 

 lon nurseries, and passed them off as his own raising or importation. Had the 

 people of England known that locust seeds and locust plants were so easily to 

 be obtained, it is probable that tbe locust mania would never have attained the 

 height it did. To show the folly or the knavery of this extraordinary individual, 

 we quote the following from Loudon's "Arboretum Britannicum," which should 

 be preserved more as a literary curiosity rather ihan a historical record. " It is 



