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the best buyers — and we have sold them many 

 willows — are the cricket bat manufacturers. When 

 grown for this purpose, the young trees require 

 attention during the first few years after planting, 

 and the little branchlets should be rubbed off as 

 soon as they appear. Pollarding a willow destroys 

 it for timber ; it enables the wet to draw in, and 

 renders the heart unsound. It is not advisable to 

 cut large limbs off a willow tree, for the wound will 

 not heal. 



The willow produces only one sex on an 

 individual plant. It is easily propagated by cutting 

 two or three-year-old branches from a pollard and 

 inserting them in the ground, first making a hole 

 with a " pole pitch." Plunging them dire6fly into 

 the ground is liable to make the bark sliver, and 

 hence to kill the branch. The willow produces 

 the best of poles as coppice wood, when planted in 

 a moist situation, but it is not such an aquatic 

 tree as the alder, for it will not thrive when 

 continually submerged in water above its roots. 



Our other most prominent tree is the crack 

 willow, S. frag! lis, which is considered quite equal 

 to the white willow. There are certain distinftive 

 points of difference between the two. The leaves 

 of the white willow are covered beneath with a 

 white silky down, whereas in the crack willow the 

 leaves are smooth on both sides. The branches 

 of the crack willow, too, are said to be more 



