326 THE POPLAR. 
tionable on account of the profusion of seeds which it sheds. 
It blossoms in spring, before the leaves are expanded, and the 
seeds fall commonly early in June. I have seen the produce 
of two or three trees in a clump alongside a turnpike road 
drifted into the side-drains like wreaths of snow, and after a 
few weeks of moist, warm weather, it sometimes becomes a 
mass of vegetation obstructing the sewerage. Near well-kept 
lawns and walks, etc., the male plants should therefore be 
preferred. Notwithstanding the ease with which the tree 
might be grown by the thousand, growth from seed is not 
practised in nurseries, on account of the tree being seldom 
required by the thousand, and a cutting being equal in strength 
to a two-year seedling, while a two-year-old plant from a cut- 
ting will furnish on an average upwards of a dozen of slips or 
cuttings without injuring it. Although the sexes are seldom 
kept distinct or separate in nurseries, propagation by the 
branch is the sure method by which the sex of the young 
plant can be known. 
When the tree is to be grown from seed, the treatment 
should be that afterwards described for all the poplars. In 
ordinary arable land of a medium quality, the tree often yields 
from twenty to thirty cubical feet of wood in mixed planta- 
tions in little more than twenty years. 
The following is a note of trees planted twenty-four years 
since, on rather poor, sandy soil, about twenty feet above the 
rise of water, and in a good climate, about forty feet above 
the tide-mark, in a mixed plantation—the girths taken three 
feet above the surface of the ground :— 
Girth. Height. 
Black Italian ea : . 38 feet 6 in. 60 feet. 
Larch, . F ; . 38, 4, 48 , 
Elm, Scotch, ‘ eo 1B gy) Oe, 83 
Beech, . ; ‘ : . 2, 6, 40 ,, 
Sycamore, 2, 1, 34 , 
P. Balsamifera, the Balsam Poplar, is a native of North 
America, where it rises to the height of eighty feet. In 
