DECIDUOUS OENAMENIAL TREES. 199 



The locust can be cultivated to advantage as a timber 

 tree, only upon deep, mellow, and rather rich, sandy soils ; 

 there, its growth is wonderfully vigorous, and an immense 

 number may be grown upon a small area of ground. In 

 clayey, heavy, or strong loamy soils the tree never attains 

 much size, and is extremely liable to the attacks of the borer; 

 which renders its wood, in a great measure valueless. In 

 particularly favorable situations its culture may be made 

 extremely profitable.* 



There are but two distinct species of locust which attain 



ever saw a bit of it in a decayed state ;" and that " its wood is absolutely 

 indestructible by the powers of earth, air, and water." " The time will come," 

 he continues, " and it will not be very distant, when the locust tree will be more 

 common in England than the oak ; when a man would be thought mad if he 

 used anything but locust in the construction of sills, posts, gates, joists, feet for 

 rick stands, stocks and axletrees for wheels, hop-poles, pales,, or for anything 

 where there is liability to rot. This time will not be distant, seeing that tha 

 locust tree grows so fast. The next race of children but one, that is to say, 

 those who will be bom 60 years hence, will think the locust trees have always 

 been the most numerous trees in England ; and some curious writer of a cen- 

 tury or two hence, will tell his readers, that wonderful as it may seem, ' the 

 locust was hardly known in England until about the year 1823, when the 

 nation was introduced to a knowledge of it by William Cobbett.' What he 

 will say of me besides, I do not know ; but I know he will say this of me. I 

 enter this upon account, therefore, knowing that I am writing for centuries to 

 come." ! ! For a fuller account of his locust phrensy, we refer our readers to 

 the very complete article on Robinia, in that magnificent work, the "Arboretum 

 Britannicum." 



* There is a well known instance of the profit of tliis tree, which we perceive 

 has found its way into the memoirs of the Agricultural Society of Paris. A 

 Tarmer on Long Island, some sixty years ago, on the year of his marriage, 

 planted fourteen acres of his farm with the Yellow locust. When his eldest 

 son married at twenty-two, he cut twelve hundred dollars' worth of timber from 

 the field, as a marriage portion, which he gave his son to buy a settlement in 

 Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, then considered a part of the " western coun- 

 try." Three years after the locust grove yielded as much for a daughter ; and 

 in this way his whole family were provided for ; as the rapidity with which the 

 young suckers grew up fully repaired the breaches made in the fourteen acrea. 



