246 



THE WILLOW, 



sprig in the mouth, bearing the Palm-branches in 

 their hands. This usage remains among the 

 ignorant from poor neighbourhoods^ and there is 

 still to be found a basket-woman or two at Covent 

 Garden, and in the chief markets, with this 

 ^Palm' as they call it, on the Saturday before 

 Palm Sunday, which they sell to those who are 

 willing to buy ; but the demand of late years has 

 been very little, and hence the quantity on sale is 

 very small. Nine out of ten among the purchasers 

 buy it in imitation of others, they care not why ; 

 and such purchasers, being Londoners, do not 

 even know the tree which produces it, but imagine 

 it to be a real Palm-tree, and ^ wonder they never 

 saw any Palm-trees, and where they grow.' " 



The Willow ripens its seeds early enough to 

 furnish many of the feathered tribe with a soft 

 and warm material for lining their nests ; and 

 this too is all the more valuable from the fact 

 that no other downy seeds are as yet ripe, and 

 that the rains of winter have beaten into the earth 

 all the thistle-down that had not been dispersed by 

 the preceding equinoctial gales. In fine weather 

 the air is often filled with the floating seeds, as 

 they are wafted away to some suitable place of 

 growth."* Loudon says, that this down is some- 

 times collected and used as a substitute for cotton 

 in stuffing mattresses, and that in Germany a 

 coarse kind of paper is made of it. 



The leaves of several kinds of Willow are, on 



* A part of the kitchen-garden at Versailles having been neglected 

 during the first Revolution, and for many years after, indeed until 

 1819, the light downy seeds from Poplars and Willows in the neigh- 

 bouring woods sprung up, and converted the whole place into a wood 

 of timber-trees. 



