1456 ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. PART III. 



and Royle mentions several species as indigenous both to the lowlands and 

 mountainous regions of Northern India. & pedicellata Desf. and S. baby- 

 lonica are found wild in the north of Africa; and S. Huniboldtmna and 

 S. Bonplandwna on the mountains of Peru and Columbia. The species 

 indigenous to North America are not very numerous ; but Pursli has de- 

 scribed 37 sorts, as either wild or in a state of cultivation there. The 

 number of species in different countries, however, cannot at present be deter- 

 mined with anything like accuracy, since what are considered as species by 

 some botanists are looked upon as only varieties by others. Thus, Schleicher 

 finds 119 species within the narrow limits of Switzerland; Host, 60 species 

 natives of Austria; and Smith, and other British botanists, 71 species in- 

 digenous to Britain. Koch, however, the latest, and, as it appears to us, the 

 most judicious, writer on the genus tfalix, considers that all the alleged spe- 

 cies, natives of Europe, may be reduced to 48. Perhaps, in addition to 

 these, there may be a dozen natives of North America, which are not natives 

 of Europe; and half that number natives of Asia. Of 182 species described 

 by botanists, Koch observes, 17 only are extra-European. 



History. Theophrastus and Pliny speak of different sorts of willows ; the 

 latter describing 8 species, as among the most useful of aquatic trees, not even 

 excepting the poplar and the alder. The willow, Pliny says, furnishes long 

 props for supporting vines, and the bark may be employed for tying up the 

 shoots ; and the young shoots, he adds, are much employed in basket-making. 

 The kinds which the Romans used for this purpose appear, from Pliny's 

 descriptions, to have been the S. alba, S. vitellina, S. viminalis, and the S. ame- 

 rina of Pliny and Dalechamp, which was probably, as Dr. Walker thinks, the 

 white willow of Theophrastus, and is certainly the S. decipiens L. These 

 kinds formed the osier holts of the Romans, and are still those principally 

 cultivated for basket-making, throughout Europe and North America, in the 

 present day. Among modern botanists, the Bauhins, in 1G50, first began to 

 distinguish willows by their magnitude, the shape of their leaves, and by the 

 nature of their flow ers and fruit : and these authors were also the first to 

 recognise in each species a fertile and an unfertile individual; and, with 

 Tragus, to assert that willows could be propagated from seed, like other plants; 

 a fact that had been denied since the days of Aristotle. Scopoli, in his 

 Flora Carniolica, published in 1760, relates that he had often observed female 

 willows fecundated by males which are accounted of a different species ; and, 

 if this observation is correct, it will help to account for the great number of 

 kinds which compose this genus. The scientific botanical history of the wil- 

 low may be considered as commencing with Ray's Synopsis, in 1660, in which 

 he describes 10 species as growing in the neighbourhood of Cambridge. Lin- 

 naeus, in 1737, described, in the Flora Lapponica, 19 species, chiefly alpine 

 kinds ; and in the second edition of his Species Plantarum, published in 1753, 31 

 species. Haller, in 1758, described 21 species as natives of Switzerland ; and 

 Villars, in 1789, 30 species as natives of Dauphine. Willdenow, in his edition 

 of Linngeus's Species Plantarum, published in 1797, describes 116 species. 

 Smith, in Rees's Cyclopedia, published in 1819, describes 141 species; to which 

 Willdenow and other botanists have since added, according to Koch, 41 species 

 more, making in all 182; adding to these Schleicher's 119 new species, the 

 total number is 254 ! In 1785, Hoffmann published the first fasciculus of his 

 elaborate History of Willows, the last fasciculus of which came out in 1791 ; 

 but the work was never completed. In so far as it goes, it is a splendid work ; 

 and one which can scarcely be surpassed either for accuracy or beauty. In 

 1828, Professor Koch, director of the botanic garden at Erlangen, published 

 his De Salicibus Europais Commentatio, an admirable work, of which a more 

 particular account will be given here after ; in which he has reduced all the 

 European sorts, amounting, as we have just seen, to 237 (17 of the 254 being 

 extra-European), to 48 species, belonging to 10 groups. Subsequently to the 

 appearance of Koch's work, Dr. Host, director of the Flora Austriaca Botanic 

 Garden at Vienna, published his Salix ; of which only the first volume ap- 



