WHAT TO PLANT. 69 



facture of planes, tool-handles, and the like. 

 The fruit of the beech-tree, the beechnuts, or 

 beech-mast is also valuable as food for swine, 

 and in Europe the right of feeding swine in the 

 great forests of beech and oak, or the right of 

 " pasturage," was one of the most valuable 

 rights of the peasantry. In the endeavor to 

 improve the quality and productiveness of the 

 forests in recent times, by protecting the young 

 trees from injury by animals, this has been the 

 most difficult right to extinguish. The peas- 

 antry have clung to it tenaciously. 



The willows have not received the attention 

 which they have deserved from tree-planters. 

 The weeping-willow, an imported tree, and 

 limited in the range of its adaptability to our 

 soil and climate, has been used to some extent 

 as an ornamental tree on the lawn and as a fu- 

 nereal tree in the cemetery, and we have been 

 accustomed to see other willows growing spon- 

 taneously along the water-courses, without re- 

 garding them as having any particular value. 

 Their principal use has been as cheap fuel, ex- 

 cept where a powder-mill has happened to be 

 near where they have grown, and then the own- 



