1478 ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. PART III. 
that season, in order that the walks may be used without the risk of damping 
the feet. For the same reason, also, when it can be accomplished, the salictum 
should not be at any great distance from the shrubbery or the flower-garden. 
Let us suppose a collection of a hundred sorts of willows, planted in good 
soil, with sufficient room to assume their natural sizes and shapes; that the 
plants have been ten years planted ; and.that they are all in flower, or coming 
mto flower; and we shall readily imagine that a scene of so much of a particular 
kind of beauty and splendour has never yet been presented to the botanist or the 
lover of gardening. For such a salictum, two or three acres would be requisite; 
but these, we should think, might easily be spared in the parks of wealthy pro- 
prietors in England, or in the grounds of gentlemen having residences in the 
mountainous districts of Wales and Scotland. 
Accidents, Diseases, and Insects. |The willow is subject to few accidents or 
diseases; but it is liable to be attacked by many insects. Salix fragilis 
Mathew states to be subject, in Scotland, to a disease similar to what the 
canker is in the apple tree. This disease, he says, is generally concentrated in cer- 
tain parts of the bark and alburnum of the trunk; aportion of the branches above 
which withers, and the uppermost boughs, after a time, assume the appearance 
of a stag’s head and horns; which, from the indestructibility of these dead 
branches, the tree retains for many years ; and hence the name of stag’s-head 
osier, which is applied to this species. This disease, and other causes, espe- 
cially in old trees, give rise to rottenness in the trunk; which, in the willow, 
from its being comparatively a short-lived tree, takes place, more especially in 
wet soils, much sooner than in most other species. Mr. Sang mentions (Kal., 
p. 527.), that he found lime produce canker in the twigs of basket willows ; 
so that, when he attempted to bend them, they broke short off at the cankered 
place. (See p. 1469.) 
One of the earliest notices of insects injurious to willows is given by Mr. Wil- 
liam Curtis, in vol.i. of the Linnean Transactions, published in 1791. This article 
we consider so interesting and instructive, that we shall here give it almost entire. 
It was read before the Linnzan Society in November, 1788 :— “ Several species 
of willow, particularly three of the most useful and ornamental, the S, alba, 
the S. fragilis, and the S. babylénica, are well known to be subject to the 
depredations of numerous insects, and of the larve of the Céssus Lignipérda 
(already described as attacking the elm, see p. 1386.) in particular, which feed 
on the substance of the wood, and prove uncommonly destructive to the 
latter species; for, as the larvae in each tree are generally numerous, in the 
course of a few years they destroy so much of the trunk, that the first 
violent gale of wind blows down the tree. So infested are the weeping 
willows, in many nurseries, with these insects, that scarcely one in ten can be 
selected free from them.” The willows are infested, also, in the same way by 
the larve of the Cerambyx moschatus ; and also by those of a species of the 
Curculiénida, which was little suspected of committing similar depredations, 
but which, in proportion to its size, is no less destructive than those of the 
Cerambyx and Cossus. The larvae of a species of Nitidula [Silpha Z.] are 
also found to be injurious in a similar manner to those above named. 
In the beginning of June, 1780, Mr. Curtis observed a young tree of the 
Salix viminalis, which had been planted in his garden two years, and which 
was about 6in. in diameter, throwing out from various parts of its trunk 
a substance somewhat resembling sawdust, which fell at its base in no incon- 
siderable quantity. This substance, on a closer examination, was found to 
proceed from holes about the size of a goose-quill, penetrating deeply into the 
substance of the wood, obliquely upwards and downwards. On its first 
coming out, it appeared of the colour of the wood, and was moist; and as it 
grew dry it became of a browner colour. The whole of the trunk where this 
internal operation was going forward emitted a smell somewhat like beer in a 
state of fermentation ; and various insects, allured thereby, settled on the tree, 
and seemed eagerly to imbibe nourishment from it : among others, the Vanéssa — 
Atalanta, Cetonia aurata, A‘pis mellifica, Cantharis [‘Veléphorus] livida, with 
a 
