1200 ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. PART III, 
bullfinches, pheasants, and other birds. A rose colour is drawn from them, 
for tinting maps and prints; and their juice, with the addition of alum, is used 
for dyeing wool and silk green. In Germany, they furnish a colour for 
painting playing cards; and in Flanders their juice is employed for colouring 
wine. But one of the most remarkable products of the berries is a greenish, 
mild, agreeably flavoured oil; which may be used both for culinary purposes 
and lamps, and for making soap. For making this oil, the berries are put into 
a cask for twelve or fifteen hours; they are then taken out and ground, and 
afterwards pressed, and the oil skimmed off. The marc, or mass of husks and 
seeds, is then ground a second time, heated and moistened, and again pressed ; 
when a supply of oil of an inferior description is obtained, which is used for 
coarser purposes. In Belgium and Silesia, the small twigs are used by the 
tanners; and for this purpose the privet hedges are clipped in the month of 
June; and the clippings are dried in the sun, or in stoves, and afterwards 
reduced to powder ; in which state they are sent tothe tanneries. In Belgium, 
the shoots are used, like those of the osier, for tying articles, in basket-making, 
&c., and as props for vines. The wood makes a superior description of 
charcoal, which is used in the manufacture of gunpowder. In Britain, the 
most valuable use of the privet is as a hedge plant, and as an undergrowth in 
ornamental plantations. On the Continent, it is also much used as a hedge 
plant, the sets being taken from the indigenous woods; and, unlike other 
shrubs so transplanted, seldom failing to grow freely. This is, doubtless, one 
reason why the plant has been so much employed for hedges, wherever it is 
indigenous. From its property of growing under the drip of trees, it forms a 
good subevergreen undergrowth, where the box, the holly, or the common 
laurel would be too expensive, or too tedious of growth. The privet has been 
long used in the court-yards of dwelling-houses, for concealing naked walls, 
and preventing the eye from seeing objects or places which it is considered 
desirable to conceal from the view. It thrives well in towns where pit-coal is 
used; and the-best hedges surrounding the squares of London are of this 
shrub. Trained against a white stone or plastered wall, it produces a very 
pleasing effect, suggesting the idea of a large vigorous-growing myrtle. 
The evergreen variety forms a most valuable plant in suburban shrub- 
beries; and both it and the common sort, when trained with a single stem 
6 ft. or 8 ft. high, will make some of the most desirable small trees that can be 
planted on a lawn; on account of their neat compact form, and somewhat 
pendulous, and yet picturesquely tufted, branches, their profusion of white 
flowers, and their groups of black fruit, which remain on all the winter, and 
form a powerful attraction to the blackbird and the thrush in spring. The 
varieties with white, yellow, and green fruit are very ornamental during winter, 
as is the variegated-leaved variety during spring. The privet may be used as 
a stock for the different species of lilac, and, probably, for all the Oleacez. 
Soil, Situation, Propagation, §c. The privet grows best in rather a strong 
loam, somewhat moist ; and it attains the largest size in an open situation : 
but it will grow on any soil, and under the shade and drip of deciduous trees, 
though by no means of evergreen ones. In good moist soils, under the shade 
of trees, or in hedges protected by the hawthorn, it becomes nearly evergreen, 
as it does, also, when cultivated in rich garden soils, in sheltered situations. 
Though all the varieties bear seed, and the common sort in great abundance, 
yet plants, in British nurseries, are almost always raised by cuttings, which not 
only produce larger plants of the species in a shorter period, but continue the 
varieties with greater certainty. When plants are to be raised from seed, the 
berries should be treated like haws, and kept a year in the rot-heap, or sown 
immediately after being gathered, as, if ctherwise treated, they will not come up 
for:18 months. As shrubs, privet plants require very little pruning; but, as 
low trees, they must have the side shoots from the stem carefully rubbed off 
whenever they appear. Treated as hedges, or as verdant sculptures, for which 
they are particularly well adapted, they may be clipped twice a year, in June 
and March ; and, every five or six years, the sides of the hedges ought to be 
