616 ARBORETUM AND FRUT1CETUM. PART III. 



adds, that, though seeds may be procured in the neighbourhood of London, 

 yet that the best mode is to import them from North America ; sending the 

 order for that purpose in the month of June, and being particularly careful to 

 get seeds of that year, because two years' old seeds will not grow. (Recrea- 

 tions in Agriculture, vol. vi. p. 560.) In France, in the year 1803, a work, 

 entitled Lettre sur le Robinier, was published in Paris by M. Francois de 

 Neufchateau, containing the essence of all that had been previously published 

 on the subject in France, supported by the republication of many previously 

 written tracts, or extracts from them. A translation of M. Francois's work 

 occupies the first 156 pages of Withers's Treatise on the Acacia; and, with a 

 notice of the article by Adanson, in the French Encyclopedia, and another by 

 Miller, editor of the Journal des Forets, dated 1830, forms a very interesting 

 history of the tree in France, from its first introduction into that country to 

 the present time. The result of all that has been said in favour of the 

 acacia in France, according to Miller, is, that it is generally employed in that 

 country to decorate pleasure-grounds ; but he is " not aware that there are 

 any forest plantations of acacia, for the express purpose of raising timber for 

 carpenter's work, and ship timber." (Withers's Treatise, p. 278.) 



In the year 1823, an extraordinary sensation was excited in Britain respect- 

 ing this tree by Cobbett. This writer while in America, from 1817 to 1819, 

 chiefly occupied himself in farming and gardening in Long Island, near New 

 York ; and, during that period, as he tells us in his Woodlands ( 326.), " was 

 convinced that nothing in the timber way could be so great a benefit as the 

 general cultivation of this tree." He adds : " Thus thinking, I brought home 

 a parcel of the seeds with me in 1819, but I had no means of sowing it till 

 1823. I then began sowing it, but upon a very small scale. I sold the plants ; 

 and since that time 1 have sold altogether more than a million of them " ! 

 He elsewhere states, in the same work ( 380.), that he sold one year's trans- 

 planted plants at 10-s. per 100. He had a large kitchen-garden behind his 

 house at Kensington, which he turned into a nursery ; and he also grew trees 

 extensively on his farm at Barnes, in Surrey. He imported American tree 

 seeds, and grafts of fruit trees : and he strongly recommended all of these to 

 the British public, in his Political Register, and in the Woodlands, which was 

 published, in numbers, from 1825 to 1828. In these works, he more espe- 

 cially directed attention to the locust tree, urging, in his clear and forcible 

 manner, the immense importance of this tree in ship-building ; and he was the 

 means of many thousands of it being planted in the southern and middle dis- 

 tricts of England, and even as far north as Durham. The name of locust, as 

 applied to this tree, was, before Cobbett's time, almost unknown in England, 

 and many persons, in consequence, thought it was a new tree. Hence, while 

 quantities of plants of Robima Pseud-acacia stood unasked for in the nur- 

 series, the locust, which every one believed could only be had genuine from 

 Mr. Cobbett, could not be grown by him in sufficient quantities to supply the 

 demand. Cobbett imported the seeds in tons ; but, when he ran short of the 

 real American ones, he procured them, as well as young plants, from the 

 London nurseries. This we state on the authority of the late Mr. William 

 Malcolm of the Kensington Nursery, who sold him both seeds and plants. 

 We do not say that there was anything wrong in Cobbett's doing this ; but, 

 had the public known that locust seeds and locust plants were so easily to 

 be procured, it is probable that the locust mania would never have attained 

 the height it did. We have ourselves, several times, accompanied planters 

 to Cobbett's nursery to procure trees ; and went once with a gentleman who 

 had purchased a large estate in South Wales, who bought some thousands of 

 locust plants to send to it. When he mentioned to us his intention, we told 

 him that he might purchase the plants at half the price in the Bristol Nursery; 

 and that, from the comparative shortness of the distance, he would not only 

 save a considerable expense in carriage,but that the plants would be in a much 

 fresher state, and, consequently, more likely to grow when they arrived at his 

 place. No arguments of ours, however, were of any avail ; and Cobbett's locust 



