The Locust. 



CiiESxuT, which mount faster, or at least become a pole 

 sooner than any of the rest of our underwoods. 



390. As underwood, the Locust would not only make 

 poles; but stakes to last for a life-time. Michaux says, that 

 when as big as one's wrist, or less, they are cut down, on 

 the borders of the Garonne, in France, and are cleft in two, 

 to make vine props or stakes, and that in that capacity they 

 serve, slender as they are, for twenty years. Nine times 

 out of ten, our dead hedges, whether made of bushes or of 

 rods, tumble down at the end of two years, owing princi- 

 pally to the perishable quality of the stakes, which rot from 

 the top of the ground downwards, in a very short time. A 

 hedge made with Locust stakes would stand till the rods and 

 the bushes were absolutely rotten ; and these being not ex- 

 posed to the working of the wet and the ground upon them, 

 would last much longer than they now do. At any rate, 

 the stakes would still remain good, and these are the most 

 expensive part of the things composing a dead hedge. 



391. I have before mentioned the great utility of the 

 Locust in the making of pins in the putting rafters together, 

 or in the fastening of rails into posts. However small, if 

 big enough for a pin, the youngness of the wood is of no 

 consequence; for the young is nearly as durable as the old. 

 Teeth for the heads of wooden rakes; stuff to split into 

 little pales for making hurdle gates for sheep; stuff for 

 espeliers for gardens : all these would come out of the cut- 

 ting down of a Locust coppice. No part of it, except the 

 mere brush, would fail to answer some valuable i)urpo3e ; 

 and even the brush, though it be green, burns better than 

 the bnish of any other wood that I know any thing of, the 

 HicKORV only excepted. 



