838 



polished and worked up into furniture. The White Elm of North 

 America {U. americana) comes very near our Wych Elm in charac- 

 ter, attains a greater bulk, and exceeds it in the graceful contour of 

 its fine recurved branches, being in fact one of the most magnificent 

 trees of that continent, and deserving much more attention from our 

 arboriculturists than it has hitherto received. It is the pride of the 

 beautiful village towns of western Massachusetts and Connecticut, 

 such as Newhaven, Springfield and Northampton, above whose ru- 

 ral streets and gay tenements its huge massive trunks rise like magni- 

 ficent columns, supporting a canopy of deepest shade and verdure. 

 It would doubtless flourish as well with us in England as our U. 

 suberosa in America, where, at Boston, are many fine specimens in 

 and around that most English looking, thinking and speaking city. 



The following list of Hampshire Willows must doubtless seem a 

 very meagre one to those who have directed their attention to this, 

 the most difficult and perplexing genus perhaps in the whole range of 

 botany, not excepting the Brambles and their graceful first-cousins 

 the Roses. Some years ago I set to work con amove to collect and 

 describe such of the willows of this island as looked really indigenous, 

 eschewing all acquaintance with the pliant denizens of osier grounds,* 

 which custom has strangely permitted to pass as habitats for the spe- 

 cies of this genus, with about as much propriety as if the garden or 

 shrubbery were held to be genuine stations from whence to draw the 

 materials for a British flora. Anticipating great trouble and little sa- 

 tisfaction in the execution of my task, I was not sorry to find Nature 

 herself in a mood to lighten my labours and abridge their duration 

 by giving me but scanty materials to work upon, yet somewhat cha- 

 grined at her parsimony in withholding from the Vectian flora the more 

 beautiful of the willow tribe, leaving us little else than the compara- 

 tively worthless and uninteresting family of sallows to call truly our 

 own. For the mainland section of the county I have no additional 

 species to record on personal observation, though many more, real or 

 fictitious, must be supposed to exist in so well watered and well 

 wooded a region as Hampshire. This deficiency I shall endeavour 

 to make up in future, which before my attention was turned to the 



* The term " withy bed" sometimes made use of by me is not always synonymous 

 with " osier bed," " willow plot," " willow ground," implying a piece of land planted 

 with osiers for the basket-makers, but simply a boggy tract covered with willows 

 (usually of the sallow tribe) of spontaneous growth, of which we have many in the 

 Isle of Wight, occupying the little valleys or hollows between the bills, and filled 

 with such truly native kinds as S. caprea, aquatica, aurita, &c. 



