308 THE WILLOW. 



markets, with this 'Palm,' as they call it, on the Saturday 

 before Palm Sunday, which they sell to those who are 

 willing to buy ; but the demand of late years h.xs been 

 very little, and hence the quantity on sale is very small. 

 Nine out of ten among the purchasers buy it in imitation 

 of others, they care not why ; and such purchasers, being 

 Londoners, do not even know the tree which produces it, 

 but imagine it to be a real Palm-tree, and ' wonder they 

 never saw any Palm trees, and where they grow.'" 



The Willow ripens its seeds early enough to furnish 

 many of the feathered tribe with a soft and warm material 

 for lining their nests ; and this too is all the more valuable 

 from the fact that no other downy seeds are as yet ripe, 

 and that the rains of winter have beaten into the earth all 

 the thistle-down that had not been dispersed by the pre- 

 ceding equinoctial gales. In fine weather the air is often 

 filled with the floating seeds as they are wafted away to 

 some suitable place of growth. 1 Loudon says that this 

 down is sometimes collected and used as a substitute for 

 cotton in stuffing mattresses ; and that in Germany a 

 coarse kind of paper is made of it. 



The leaves of several kinds of Willow are, on the Con- 

 tinent, used as fodder for cattle, being collected in summer, 

 and stacked for winter consumption. In Sweden and 

 Norway the bark is kiln-dried in seasons of scarcity, and 

 mixed with oatmeal. In the same countries the twigs 

 are twisted into ropes, as they were in Pliny's time, 

 which are used even for the cordage of vessels. The 

 inner bark is applied to the same purposes as that of the 

 Lime, and in Tartary is woven into a coarse cloth. The 

 wood is soft, smooth, and light, and is applied to a great 

 variety of purposes, especially for fast- sailing sloops of 

 war and cricket-bats. Split into thin strips it is manu- 



' A part of the kitchen-garden at Versailles having been neglected 

 during the first Revolution, and for many years after, indeed until 

 1819, the light downy seeds from Poplars and Willows in the 

 neighbouring woods sprung up, and conveited the whole place into 

 a wood of timber-trees. 



