14-78 AUBOKETU3I AND FKUT1CETUM. PART III. 



that season, in order that the walks may be used without the risk of damping 

 the feet. For the same reason, also, when it can be accomplished, the salictum 

 should not be at any great distance from the shrubbery or the flower-garden. 

 Let us suppose a collection of a hundred sorts of willows, planted in good 

 soil, with sufficient room to assume their natural sizes and shapes ; that the 

 plants have been ten years planted ; and that they are all in flower, or coming 

 into flower; and we shall readily imagine that a scene of so much of a particular 

 kind of beauty and splendour has never yet been presented to the botanist or the 

 lover of gardening. For such a salictum, two or three acres would be requisite; 

 but these, we should think, might easily be spared in the parks of wealthy pro- 

 prietors in England, or in the grounds of gentlemen having residences in the 

 mountainous districts of Wales and Scotland. 



Accidents, Diseases, and Insects. The willow is subject to few accidents or 

 diseases; but it is liable to be attacked by many insects. alix fragilis 

 Mathew states to be subject, in Scotland, to a disease similar to what the 

 canker is in the apple tree. This disease, he says, is generally concentrated in cer- 

 tain parts of the bark and alburnum of the trunk; aportion of the branches above 

 which withers, and the uppermost boughs, after a time, assume the appearance 

 of a stag's head and horns ; which, from the indestructibility of these dead 

 branches, the tree retains for many years ; and hence the name of stag's-head 

 osier, which is applied to this species. This disease, and other causes, espe- 

 cially in old trees, give rise to rottenness in the trunk ; which, in the willow, 

 from its being comparatively a short-lived tree, takes place, more especially in 

 wet soils, much sooner than in most other species. Mr. Sang mentions (Kal. t 

 p. 527.), that he found lime produce canker in the twigs of basket willows; 

 so that, when he attempted to bend them, they broke short off at the cankered 

 place. (Seep. 1469.) 



One of the earliest notices of insects injurious to willows is given by Mr. Wil- 

 liam Curtis,in vol. i. of theLinncean Transactions, published in 1791. This article 

 we consider so interesting and instructive, that we shall here give it almost entire. 

 It was read before the Linnaean Society in November, 1788: " Several species 

 of willow, particularly three of the most useful and ornamental, the S. alba, 

 the S. fragilis, and the S. babylonica, are well known to be subject to the 

 depredations of numerous insects, and of the larvae of the Cossus Ligniperda 

 (already described as attacking the elm, see p. 1386.) in particular, which feed 

 on the substance of the wood, and prove uncommonly destructive to the 

 latter species ; for, as the larva? in each tree are generally numerous, in the 

 course of a few years they destroy so much of the trunk, that the first 

 violent gale of wind blows down the tree. So infested are the weeping 

 willows, in many nurseries, with these insects, that scarcely one in ten can be 

 selected free from them." The willows are infested, also, in the same way by 

 the larvae of the ferambyx moschatus; and also by those of a species of the 

 Curculionidae, which was little suspected of committing similar depredations, 

 but which, in proportion to its size, is no less destructive than those of the 

 C'erambyx and Cossus. The larvae of a species of Nitidula [tfilpha />.] are 

 also found to be injurious in a similar manner to those above named. 



In the beginning of June, 1780, Mr. Curtis observed a young tree of the 

 Salix viminalis, which had been planted in his garden two years, and which 

 was about 6 in. in diameter, throwing out from various parts of its trunk 

 a substance somewhat resembling sawdust, which fell at its base in no incon- 

 siderable quantity. This substance, on a closer examination, was found to 

 proceed from holes about the size of a goose-quill, penetrating deeply into the 

 substance of the wood, obliquely upwards and downwards. On its first 

 coming out, it appeared of the colour of the wood, and was moist ; and as it 

 grew dry it became of a browner colour. The whole of the trunk where this 

 internal operation was going forward emitted a smell somewhat like beer in a 

 state of fermentation ; and various insects, allured thereby, settled on the tree, 

 and seemed eagerly to imbibe nourishment from it : among others, the Vanessa 

 Atalantrt, Cetonia aurata, ^( v pi.s mellifica, rdntharis [Telephorus] livida, with 



