HIGHWOODS, COPSES, ETC. 291 
copse into highwoods when this form of crop- 
ping seems the more advantageous. Sometimes, 
indeed, coppice still more than manages to 
pay its way, even though in the great majority 
of cases the fall in the amount obtainable per 
square pole or ‘lug’ of the coppice hags has 
made this system far from so profitable a form 
of crop as it used to be. And yet, on suitable 
land, and in exceptional cases, some forms of 
coppice can yield larger returns than any other 
kind of woodland crop. This is notably so in 
the case of the osier-holts of the fen districts. 
There are three chief kinds of osiers or basket 
willows, the Common Osier (Salix viminalzs), 
with white silky hairs on its leaves; the smooth- 
leaved Laurel Osier (5. triandra), and the Purple 
Osier (S. purpurea), so called from the colour of 
its anthers at the time of flowering. But the 
varieties and the crosses between these are almost 
innumerable. In the fen country the cost of 
ploughing or fallowing and trenching land for an 
osier-holt, and of purchasing and planting the 
‘sets,’ runs from about £16 to £23 an acre. 
The planting is done in February or March with 
slips of two-year-old wood from 16 to 18 inches 
