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.
TRIANDRIA.
256. NUTMEGS are the kernels of a fruit produced in several islands of the East Indies.
They are each surrounded by the spice called mace, and, externally, by a husk about half an inch in thickness, which has somewhat the appearance of a small peach (Fig. 80).
The nutmeg-tree (Myristica aromatica) is not unlike our cherry-tree, both in growth and size. Its leaves are nearly oval, but pointed, waved, obliquely nerved, of bright green colour above, and whitish beneath. The flowers are small, and hang upon slender stalks.
When this fruit is nearly ripe the husk opens at the end, and exposes a net-work of scarlet mace. Underneath the mace is a black shell, about as thick as that of a filbert, and very hard; and in this is contained the nutmeg.