33 
The Future of Willow Timber in England. 
If the bats were so cut that the rings were in the other 
direction, the wood would fleck off very soon after the bat 
was brought into use. 
The process requires great skill, especially if the wood is 
faulty ; sometimes it requires clefts weighing 10 lb. when full 
of sap to produce one bat which would approximately weigh 
lb., and this is necessary to avoid knots and shakes which 
render the bat comparatively valueless. 
The best clefts come from the lower part of the tree, which 
is far tougher in all varieties than the upper portion. There is 
no reason why the bat should not include the outer sap wood, 
although this would be considered useless for furniture or 
machinery, or any other purpose for which durability is 
required. The clefts can be left on the ground to be seasoned, 
but are more generally taken direct to the factory and stored 
there. They become ready for use at the end of about six 
months, but the better manufacturers prefer a twelve months’ 
seasoning. They should be stacked of course in such a manner 
that the air passes freely between them. 
At the end of six or twelve months the bat is shaped by means 
of a tool much of the same nature as a spokeshave. It is then 
subjected to hydraulic pressure, and it is here that the value of 
good timber shows itself, since the S. fragilis or open bark 
is unable to stand as much pressure as the close bark. The 
handles are then added and the face of the bat is oiled. This, in 
conjunction with more seasoning, endurates the face of the bat. 
The whole of this process of manufacture, which hardly comes 
within the scope of my paper, is given in an interesting 
pamphlet written by Mr. G. G. Bussey, the owner of the well- 
known sports manufactory at Peckham. 
The Future of Willow Timber in England. 
It has been found very difficult to ascertain the truth as 
to the value of the East Anglian willows. I was at first 
informed that these willows were undesirable, but was 
comforted by the opinion of other experts who asserted that 
there were no willows of any value grown outside England 
and very few in England except in the Eastern Counties. 
I was congratulating a very large owner of willow trees 
last year on this second opinion, but shortly afterwards 
he sent me a cutting from an English paper in which 
an advertisement, apparently from Holland, offered many 
thousand feet of willow described as English Salix alba at 
the low price of Is. per foot. This seemed disappointing, 
but on careful investigation it appeared that this advertise- 
ment was a bogus one : the address could not be traced nor any 
evidence obtained of this extraordinarily cheap timber. The 
VOL. 66. D 
