1200 ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. PART III. 



bullfinches, pheasants, and other birds. A rose colour is drawn from them, 

 for tinting maps and prints ; and their juice, with the addition of alum, is used 

 for dyeing wool and silk green. In Germany, they furnish a colour for 

 painting playing cards; and in Flanders their juice is employed for colouring 

 wine. But one of the most remarkable products of the berries is a greenish, 

 mild, agreeably flavoured oil ; which may be used both for culinary purposes 

 and lamps, and for making soap. For making this oil, the berries are put into 

 a cask for twelve or fifteen hours ; they are then taken out and ground, and 

 afterwards pressed, and the oil skimmed off. The marc, or mass of husks and 

 seeds, is then ground a second time, heated and moistened, and again pressed; 

 when a supply of oil of an inferior description is obtained, which is used for 

 coarser purposes. In Belgium and Silesia, the small twigs are used by the 

 tanners ; and for this purpose the privet hedges are clipped in the month of 

 June ; and the clippings are dried in the sun, or in stoves, and afterwards 

 reduced to powder ; in which state they are sent to the tanneries. In Belgium, 

 the shoots are used, like those of the osier, for tying articles, in basket-making, 

 &c., and as props for vines. The wood makes a superior description of 

 charcoal, which is used in the manufacture of gunpowder. In Britain, the 

 most valuable use of the privet is as a hedge plant, and as an undergrowth in 

 ornamental plantations. On the Continent, it is also much used as a hedge 

 plant, the sets being taken from the indigenous woods; and, unlike other 

 shrubs so transplanted, seldom failing to grow freely. This is, doubtless, one 

 reason why the plant has been so much employed for hedges, wherever it is 

 indigenous. From its property of growing under the drip of trees, it forms a 

 good subevergreen undergrowth, where the box, the holly, or the common 

 laurel would be too expensive, or too tedious of growth. The privet has been 

 long used in the court-yards of dwelling-houses, for concealing naked walls, 

 and preventing the eye from seeing objects or places which it is considered 

 desirable to conceal from the view. It thrives well in towns where pit-coal is 

 used ; and the best hedges surrounding the squares of London are of this 

 shrub. Trained against a white stone or plastered wall, it produces a very 

 pleasing effect, suggesting the idea of a large vigorous-growing myrtle. 

 The evergreen variety forms a most valuable plant in suburban shrub- 

 beries; and both it and the common sort, when trained with a single stem 

 6 ft. or 8 ft. high, v/ill make some of the most desirable small trees that can be 

 planted on a lawn ; on account of their neat compact form, and somewhat 

 pendulous, and yet picturesquely tufted, branches, their profusion of white 

 flowers, and their groups of black fruit, which remain on all the winter, and 

 form a powerful attraction to the blackbird and the thrush in spring. The 

 varieties with white, yellow, and green fruit are very ornamental during winter, 

 as is the variegated-leaved variety during spring. The privet may be used as 

 a stock for the different species of lilac, and, probably, for all the Oleaceae. 



Soil, Situation, Propagation, Sf-c. The privet grows best in rather a strong 

 loam, somewhat moist ; and it attains the largest size in an open situation : 

 but it will grow on any soil, and under the shade and drip of deciduous trees, 

 though by no means of evergreen ones. In good moist soils, under the shade 

 of trees, or in hedges protected by the hawthorn, it becomes nearly evergreen, 

 as it does, also, when cultivated in rich garden soils, in sheltered situations. 

 Though all the varieties bear seed, and the common sort in great abundance, 

 yet plants, in British nurseries, are almost always raised by cuttings, which not 

 only produce larger plants of the species in a shorter period, but continue the 

 varieties with greater certainty. When plants are to be raised from seed, the 

 berries should be treated like haws, and kept a year in the rot-heap, or sown 

 immediately after being gathered, as, if otherwise treated, they will not come up 

 for 18 months. As shrubs, privet plants require very little pruning; but, as 

 low trees, they must have the side shoots from the stem carefully rubbed off 

 whenever they appear. Treated as hedges, or as verdant sculptures, for which 

 they are particularly well adapted, they may be clipped twice a year, in June 

 and March ; and, every five or six years, the sides of the hedges ought to be 



