156 AMENTACE^. 



tion, he would have shared in some of the feelings expressed by Pollok for 

 two older trees : 



' ' Tall trees they were 

 And old, and had been old a century 

 Before my day. None living could say aught 

 About their youth ; but they were goodly trees : 

 And oft I wonder'd, as I sate and thought 

 Beneath their summer shade, or in the night 

 Of winter heard the spirits of the wind 

 Growling among their boughs— how they had grown 

 To such a height in such tempestuous place. 

 And when a hapless branch, torn by the blast. 

 Fell down, I mourn'd as if a friend had fallen." 



In the spring of 1810, Dr. Withering found Dr. Johnson's tree having, at 

 six feet from the ground, a girth of twenty-one feet, and extending twenty 

 feet in height before dividing into enormous branches. It then stood in 

 unimpaired beauty, a noble tree ; but in the autumn of that very year 

 a tempest rent away many of the branches ; and five years afterwards nearly 

 half the tree fell, leaving only the large trunk and a few side boughs. 

 A storm in April, 1829, finally levelled this handsome and interesting Willow 

 to the ground ; but a young shoot, which had been taken from the tree in the 

 previous season, was planted on the old site, and became the " Johnson's 

 Willow " of later years. 



10. Common White Willow (S. dlha). — Leaves elliptical-lanceolate, 

 with glandular serratures, pointed ; when young, silky beneath, often so 

 above ; ovaines nearly sessile, smooth ; stigmas nearly sessile, short ; scales 

 short, downy at the margin. In one variety of this Willow the young leaves 

 are silky on both sides ; and in another, termed the Blue Willow, the under 

 side of the leaf is silky at first, but finally becomes quite smooth, and of sea- 

 green hue. This is the commonest of all our Willows, and one well known 

 to country dwellers or country ramblers, growing in moist woods, and turning 

 up, as the wind blows, its " silver lining to the light." It looks quite hoary 

 and venerable when in age ; and though a handsome tree, yet it needs the 

 admixture on the landscape of some warmer-tinted foliage, or the scene is 

 cold and grey. When growing in numbers it might remind us of what 

 Robert Hall said of the AVillows about Caml^ridge, that they " looked as if 

 Nature were hanging out signals of distress ''; and as the tree is often 

 pollarded, the old pollard here and there has a very cheerless and un- 

 picturesque appearance. In olden times many kinds of trees were pollarded, 

 as their wood Avas needed for fuel instead of coal ; and some of the largest 

 oaks in the kingdom appear to have been so cut in order that they might 

 serve as living stores of fuel to the inhabitants of the neighbouring mansion. 

 In earlier days such trees were called Pollingers and Dotterels. For many 

 years past they have been more scarce on the landscape, and the Willow-trees 

 alone are now made into pollards, that their boughs maj^ furnish our baskets. 

 The White Willow has been largely planted for this use, both in this and 

 other countries ; and Mr. Loudon says that some hundreds of miles of the 

 road from Moscow to the Austrian frontiers, where it crosses the interminable 

 Steppes, are marked by pollards, which are planted at regular distances on 



