Huntingdon Willow. 45 



improvements going forward in the island, is unprecedented ; 

 consequently wood of every description is becoming every day 

 more valuable. 



When a man of wealth employs his capital in any ordinary 

 speculation, or in any of the joint stock schemes of the day, he 

 calculates on an early return ; but he who lays out his money 

 in the rearing of timber, has no stimulus but the interest he 

 may have in the soil, or in the welfare of posterity. Hence, 

 where we see an estate that is likely to descend by entail to an 

 heir at law of a distant relationship, we find that the operation 

 of planting is seldom engaged in to any great extent, unless it 

 be with a view to burden that estate with a proportion of the 

 expence on such improvements, in favour of nearer or dearer 

 collateral branches of the family ; and wherever we see the 

 operation of planting entered into under such circumstances, 

 the future management of the plants is too frequently neglected. 



There are, indeed, several of our most useful trees, which 

 require the lapse of ages before they arrive at a state of abso- 

 lute maturity; but there are others of more rapid gi-owth, 

 which acquire considerable magnitude, within -the natural 

 period of human life, and which may, in the natural course of 

 events, be cut down a full grown tree, by the same hand by 

 which it was planted. The most distinguished of these, and 

 the one which seems most to deserve public attention, I con- 

 ceive to be the Huntingdon willow, Salix alba, of English bo- 

 tany, of which there are several varieties. 



The uses to which the timber of the Huntingdon willow are 

 applied are various. In ship bottoms it is not found so liable 

 to split by any accidental shock as oak or other hard wood. It 

 is found an excellent lining for stone carts, barrows,&c. In roof- 

 ing, it has been known to stand an hundred years as couples, 

 and with the exception of about half an inch on the outside, 

 the wood has been found so fresh at the end of that period, 

 as to be fit for boat-building. Its bark is used by the tanners 

 and there is no tree that in the same time will yield so much 

 bark for fuel, or that requires less labour in preparing it for 

 the fire, where it gives out most heat when burnt in a green 

 state ; and to all this it may be added, that its cultivation is the 

 most simple, while it will luxuriate in most soils, where other 

 trees make comparatively slow progress. 



As a proof of what is stated above respecting easy culture 

 and rapidity of growth, I may remark, that it is only fourteen 

 years next February, since I was engaged in planting a piece 

 of rising ground on the estate of Rait, on the northern bank 

 of the Carse of Gowrie. The soil a dry gravel, which effer- 

 vesced freely with acids, the bank formed a slope of 45° with- 



