255. _WILLOW, OSIER, or WITHY._--Of this very extensive tribe nearly fifty
distinct species have been discovered in our own island. The slender
branches of many of these are applied to useful purposes, but particularly
for making baskets, bird-cages, and what is called wicker-work; springles
for fastening down thatch, wheels or traps for catching lobsters and eels;
hoops and crates. The _wood_ is useful for the handles of hatchets, prongs,
spades, and other rural implements; and also furnishes shoemakers with
cutting and whetting boards, on which they cut leather and sharpen the
edges of their knives.
As willows generally flourish in wet situations, some of the species are
planted with a view to prevent the banks of rivers and brooks from being
washed away by floods.
The _bark_ of some kinds of willow has been applied, with effect, as a
substitute for Peruvian bark, in the cure of intermittent fevers. It has
also been esteemed useful in the tanning of leather; and, in combination
with alder, for striking a deep black colour, in the dyeing of linen.
The bark of other species may be manufactured into paper. In the year 1788,
Mr. Greaves of Milbank, near Warrington, Lancashire, made fifteen reams of
coarse paper from the bark of withen twigs, intermixed with a few nettles.
The latter, however, he afterwards discovered, would better have been left
out, as there was in them a woody substance, which does not well
incorporate with other vegetables. The paper he made was considerably
cheaper than paper of equal size and thickness made from ropes; and it was
found that pasteboard, for book covers, made of withen bark, would be much
cheaper than similar pasteboard manufactured from ropes. The process by
which this paper and pasteboard were manufactured was as follows; the bark
was stripped from the twigs in September, the time at which they are
usually cut for making white baskets; it was then hackled, like flax or
hemp, and dried in the sun, which gave it somewhat the appearance of brown
hemp: but this having been attended with considerable trouble, other parts
of the bark were dried with the leaves, as they were stripped off from the
twigs, and were then submitted to the operation of the paper-mill.
The flowering branches of one species, the _common sallow_ (_Salix
cineria_), are called palms, and are gathered by children, in many parts of
England, on Palm Sunday.