546 PLANTATIONS OF OSIERS. - [dpp. I. 



9 



Although we readily admit this fact, we are far from 

 allowing that the ground for Osier plantations should 

 be suffered to be wet in the bottom. Indeed, when- 

 ever this is the case, the shoots will never arrive to any 

 tolerable consistency for wicker-work, and will never be 

 able to resist the early frosts of autumn. We saw a 

 striking instance of this four years ago, in an attempt 

 to raise a plantation of Willows in a part of the small 

 lake of Lochore, in Fifeshire. This lake formerly co- 

 vered five or six hundred acres of space ; and was drain- 

 ed, about thirty years ago, by Captain Park of Loch- 

 ore. When the water was let off, the bottom proved 

 to be a sludgy sediment, . of many feet in thickness, and 

 of a quality apparently very rich ; but so soft, that no- 

 thing could be sown upon it for a considerable time. 

 At length, it acquired such a degree of consistency, as 

 to allow cuts to be made for draining out the water 

 from the body of the soil or sediment. These cut* 

 could only be made to a small depth at first, because 

 the whole was still in so soft a state, that it inclined, 

 like water, to every deep opening or cut that was made 

 in it. Willows were planted on a part of it. By tlie 

 time we saw it, the plantation of willows was surround- 

 ed with a ditch more than a yard wide, and nearly as 

 deep ; at one side, much deeper and wider : but, 

 when the ground was broke to two feet deep inwards 

 from the ditches, it was as soft as mortar ; hence, when 

 the roots of the willows got down that length, they 

 drank too copiously of the moisture ; and the conse- 

 quence was, that they died down generally half their 

 length, and that many of them died down quite to the 

 ground by December, notwithstanding that, in Sep- 

 tember, they had looked tolerably healthy. 



Many more instances of the same kind might be stat- 

 ed. 



