98 SYLVA BRITANNICA. 



THE WILLOW. 



Viminibus salices foecundas. 



VIRGIL. 



IN" the class of Willow, the Withy, Sallow, and 

 Ozier, are included. Of them, as well as of the 

 Willow itself, there are many different species, 

 well known to planters, to whom each has its diffe- 

 rent uses : but in proportion as they are valuable to 

 the owners of moorish or marshy land, wherein they 

 chiefly delight to grow, they are disagreeable to the 

 eye of the painter, as they begin to be polled in the 

 third year of their growth, and their decapitated 

 trunks then present an unsightly spectacle, not 

 much improved when they again sprout forth. This 

 is particularly the case in Huntingdonshire, and 

 parts of the adjoining counties, where the uniformity 

 of the low, flat, and often inundated meadows, is 

 only broken by formal rows of Pollard Willows, 

 standing disconsolately by the sides of ditches, over 

 which they have no branches left to bend. 



