The Locust. 



the ground. Use Locust timber, and it will wear out the 

 stone walls of the building-. 



SSL I should fatigue the reader were I to enumerate 

 only a tenth part of the uses of this timber 3 but, in short, if 

 the timber be imperishable, what need of anything more in 

 its praise ? Will, however, English people believe in this 

 imperishability ? I would not believe in such a thing, if no 

 proof were produced ; and, therefore, I will now proceed to 

 the proof of the truth of what I have stated. The test of 

 imperishability is the situation of a post or sill, being exposed 

 to air and water; or, rather, it being so situated as to lie 

 sopping in the wet. J was led, by circumstances to be stated, 

 by and by, to entertain, while I was last in America, an 

 anxious desire to introduce this valuable tree into England. 

 After I had resolv^ed to return in 1819, 1 set myself to work 

 to get some seed together, which I found to be no easy matter; 

 for the Locust tree is by no means abundant in any part of 

 America where I have lived; but, how to go to work to 

 persuade English people that a little tree, chopped down, 

 and put into the ground as a gate post or pale post, would 

 stand there for a hundred years without rotting at all ! 

 How to persuade English people to believe this; and to 

 believe, of course, that there was a timber about a hundred 

 times as good as their heart of Oak ! You shall hear how 

 I went to work to endeavour to effect this. 



332. In the latter end of August, in the year just spoken 

 of, I was at Plandome, the farm and residence of Mr. 

 JuDGK MiTCHKLL, in Loug Island. He was building a 

 new house on tlie spot where had stood the house of his 

 grandfather. There had been a little sort of lawn before 

 the dooi', enclosed by a pale fence. The fence had all 



