The Willow. 



a season when there is scarcely any thing in vegetation to 

 glad the eye, this tree is a very beautiful object; and it 

 grows, too, in any ground, from a dry bank to a sour clay 

 or a bog. 



572. I am, however, though reluctantly I must confess, 

 compelled to give up the expectation of ever seeing or 

 hearing of the Willow of any sort being raised in any other 

 way than from poles, stakes, truncheons, or cuttings ; and, 

 therefore, I shall now speak of the manner in which th^s is 

 usually done, first taking the Willows which are usually 

 planted in coppices. 



573. When the ground is ready for the planting of the 

 coppice, you proceed in one of two ways ; planting by poles 

 or by truncheons. The distances at which Willows should 

 be planted, is in rows at five feet apart, and the plants at 

 five feet apart in the rows. If you propagate by poles, you 

 make lines across the piece of ground five feet apart, make 

 a trifling channel with a spade or hoe along the line, then 

 lay down Willow Poles in this channel, one following the 

 other, length-ways all along the line; so that you now have 

 a line formed of poles. Then cover the poles over with 

 earth pretty thickly, except that you are to leave six or 

 eight inches of the poles exposed in every five feet. So 

 that now you have a little ridge of earth (not above an inch 

 or two high) going from one side of the piece of ground to 

 the other, with six or eight inches of pole visible at every 

 five feet from each other. Then you make another line, 

 and proceed to lay down poles, and to cover them in the 

 same manner. This is the best, the surest, the quickest, 

 and, in the end, the cheapest way of getting a Willow 

 coppice. 



