BOOK XVI. Lxvii. 173-LXIX. 176 



up on them, and althoiif^li alders in hedges give 

 protection and, if planted rather close together in 

 water, stand sentry like banks to guard the country 

 against the assaults of the rivers when they overflow, 

 and when cut down they are useful because of the 

 innumerable suckers that they produce as successors. 



LXVIII. The uses made of willows are of several Wiii/>w8 

 kinds. They send out rods of great length used for aZiwiih^^' 

 vine-trellises and at the same time provide strips of 

 bark for withes, and some grow shoots of a yielding 

 flexibility useful for tying, others extremely thin 

 ones suitable for weaving into basketwork of an 

 admirably fine texture, and other stronger ones for 

 plaiting baskets and a great many agricultural 

 utensils, while the whiter ones when the bark has 

 been removed and they have been worked smooth 

 do to make bottles more capacious than any that 

 can be made of leather, and also are extremely 

 suitable for luxurious easy chairs. The willow 

 sprouts again after being lopped, and from the short 

 stump, which is more Hke a fist than a branch, 

 makes a thicker growth for cutting, the tree being in 

 our opinion not one of the last to choose for cultivation, 

 inasmuch as none yields a safer return or involves 

 less outlay, and none is more indiiferent to weather. 



LXIX. Cato'' attributes to the willow the thirdplace Varietiesof 

 in the estimation of the country-side, and puts it before '^'"^- 

 the cultivation of the oHve and before corn or meadow- 

 land — and this is not because other kinds of withes 

 are lacking, inasmuch as the broom, the poplar, the 

 elm, the blood-red cornel, the birch, the reed when 

 spHt and the leaves of the reed, as in Liguria, and the 

 vine itself and braml)les after the thorns have been 

 - R.R. 1. 7. 



501 



