i 156 ARBORETUM AND FRUT1CETUM. PART 111. 



Japan ; ami Royle mentions several species as indigenous both to the lowlands 

 and mountainous regions oi' Northern India. S. pediccllata Desf. and S. baby- 

 I6nica are found w ild in the north of Africa ; and S. 1 Lumboldtsana and S. Bon- 

 plandicma on the mountains of Peru and Columbia. The species indigenous 

 to North America are not very numerous; but Pursh has described 37 sorts 

 as either wild or in a state of cultivation there. The number of species in 

 different countries, however, cannot at present be determined, with anything 

 like accuracy, since what are considered as species by some botanists are 

 looked upon as only varieties by others. Tims Schleicher finds 119 species 

 within the narrow limits of Switzerland; Host, 60 species natives of Austria; 

 and Smith, and other British botanists, 71 species indigenous to Britain. 

 Koch, however, the latest, and, as appears to us, the most judicious, writer 

 on the genus -Salix, considers that all the alleged species, natives of Europe, 

 may be reduced to 48. Perhaps, in addition to these, there may be a dozen 

 natives of North America which are not natives of Europe; and half that 

 number natives of Asia. Of 182 species described by botanists, Koch observes, 

 17 only are extra-European. 



History. Theophrastus and Pliny speak of different sorts of willows ; the 

 latter describing 8 species, as among the most useful of aquatic trees, not even 

 excepting the poplar and the alder. The willow, Pliny says, furnishes long 

 props for supporting vines, and the bark may be employed for tying up the 

 shoots ; and the young shoots, he adds, are much employed in basket-making. 

 The kinds which the Romans used for this purpose appear, from Pliny's 

 descriptions, to have been the S. alba, S. vitellina, S. virainalis, and the S. ame- 

 rina of Pliny and Dalcchamp, which was probably, as Dr. Walker thinks, the 

 white willow of Theophrastus, and is certainly the S. deefpiens L. These 

 kinds formed the osier holts of the Romans, and are still those principally 

 cultivated for basket-making, throughout Europe and North America, in the 

 present day. Among modern botanists, the Bauhins, in 1650, first began to 

 distinguish willows by their magnitude, the shape of their leaves, and by the 

 nature oi' their flowers and fruit : and these authors were also the first to 

 recognise in each species a fertile and an unfertile individual ; and, with 

 Tragus, to assert that willows could be propagated from seed, like other plants ; 

 a fact that had been denied since the days of Aristotle. Scopoli, in his 

 Flora CartrioHca, published in 1 700, relates that he had often observed female 

 willows fecundated by males which are accounted of a different species ; and, 

 if this observation is correct, it will help to account for the great number of 

 kinds which compose this genus. The scientific botanical history of the wil- 

 low may be considered as commencing with Ray's Synopsis, in 1GG0, in which 

 he describes 10 species as growing in the neighbourhood of Cambridge. Lin- 

 naeus, in 1737, described, in the Flora Lapponica, 19 species, chiefly alpine 

 kinds ; and in the second edition of his Species Plantarum, published in 1753, 31 

 species. Haller, in 1758, described 21 species as natives of Switzerland ; and 

 Villars, in 1789, 30 species, as natives of Dauphine. Willdenow, in his edition 

 of Linnseus's Species Plantarum, published in 1797, describes 116 species. 

 Smith, in Rees's Cyclopadia, published in 1819, describes 141 species; to which 

 Willdenow and other botanists have since added, according to Koch, 41 species 

 more, making in all 182; adding to these Schleicher's 119 new species, the 

 total number is 251 ! In 1785, Hoffman published the first fasciculus of his 

 elaborate History of Willows, the last fasciculus of which came out in 1791 ; 

 but the work was never completed. In bo far as it goes, it is a splendid work ; 

 and one which can scarcely be surpassed either for accuracy or beauty. In 

 1828, Professor Koch, director of the Botanic garden at Erlangen, published 

 I >< Satidbus Europais Commentatio, an admirable work, of which a more 



particular account will be given hereafter ; in which he has reduced all the 



European sorts, amounting, as we have just seen, to 237 (17 of the 254 being 



European), to 48 pecies, belonging to 10 groups. Subsequently to the 



appearance of Koch's work, Dr. Host, director of the Flora Austriaca Bo- 



(, rden al Vienna, published his Salix; of which only the first volume 



