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rows. The weeds can be kept down for tliree years with a 

 cultivator, when the ground will be sufficiently shaded to 

 require no further cultivation. 



Connecticut is rich in its variety of native trees, having 

 nearly sixty species, of which about forty are sizable for tim- 

 ber. Among the native trees worthy of cultivation may be 

 named the white ash, white oak, sugar maple, chestnut, hick- 

 ory, butternut, white pine, willow, and the elm. The latter, 

 when growing under favoring conditions, has been pronounced 

 ''the most magnificent vegetable of the temperate zone." 

 Much as the willow has been used as an ornamental tree, its 

 economic value has not been appreciated in this country. The 

 white willow is especially commended by experienced arborists. 

 While most at home in low grounds and beside streams, it is 

 hardy and will grow, though not as thriftily, on dry uplands 

 and in poor soils. Professor William H. Brewer says: ''In 

 England, where it is often sixty or seventy feet high in twenty 

 years, there is no wood in greater demand than good willow. 

 It is light, very tough, soft, takes a good finish, w^ill bear more 

 pounding and knocks than any other wood grown there, and 

 hence its use for cricket bats, for floats to paddle-wheels of 

 steamers, and brake-blocks on cars. It is used extensively for 

 turning, planking coasting vessels, furniture, ox-yokes, wooden 

 legs, shoe-lasts, etc. Its charcoal is used for making gun- 

 powder, its bark for tanning, its sprouts for withes and bas- 

 kets. In some sections of Europe it has been planted from 

 remote times as one of their most valued trees." Starting 

 from cuttings and growing rapidly it can be very easily prop- 

 agated. Fuller says: " It groweth incredibly fast — it being a 

 by-word that the profit by willows will buy the owner a horse 

 before that by other trees will pay for the saddle." Mr. Sar- 

 gent says: "As willow timber could be produced far more 

 cheaply than that of any of our native trees, it should soon 

 come into general use here for the purposes requiring light- 

 ness, pliancy, elasticity, and toughness — qualities which it 

 possesses in an eminent degree, and for which more valuable 

 woods are now employed. Less than one-third of the willow 

 used in the United States for basket making is produced here^ 



