Willow and poplar twigs are very strong and limber, and some kinds are used to make baskets and chairs and cradles and a great many other useful things. The slender young twigs are woven together and make very strong and durable articles. Since only the long twigs can be used, people get them in large quantities by cutting off the heads of the trees, when long sprouts shoot up all around the ends of the cut limbs. Cutting off the tops of the trees in this way is called pollarding, and a pollarded willow or poplar is rather a funny sight, particularly after it has had its head cut off a number of times. [Illustration: Pollarded willows.] Willow branches about as large around as one’s finger make very good whistles in the spring of the year. The sap flowing under the bark loosens it, so that by pounding the twig the bark can be slipped off unbroken, the wood beneath cut as desired, and the bark slipped on again. [Illustration] The dotted lines show how the wood should be cut away under the bark. Willow twigs also make very good switches, and long, ah, very long ago, when children used to be naughty, willow switches were in great demand. In these later days children are never naughty I suppose—or is it only that switching has gone out of fashion? These switches did not come from weeping willows, though that certainly would have been a very appropriate name for them. Weeping willows are large and beautiful trees that came from the eastern part of Asia. The twigs are very long and slender and hang down like a veil all about the tree. [Illustration] Weeping willows are favorites in parks and pleasure grounds, and it used to be the fashion to plant them in cemeteries, at the heads of gravestones. Everybody who has tried to preserve bird skins, or the skins of small animals, doubtless knows what salicylic acid is, but not everybody knows that this is obtained from the bark of willows and poplars. Some species of willow contain a great deal of the substance from which salicylic acid is made. Salicylic acid prevents animal tissue from decaying, and it is also used as a medicine. It is not poisonous, but is rather unpleasant to handle, as it is apt to make one sneeze. The bark of willows is also used in Europe for tanning, instead of oak or hemlock bark, which is commonly used in this country. [Illustration] “Tan bark” is bark that has been ground up and had the “tannin,” or substance that hardens leather, extracted from it. The tan bark is then put on roads or walks, or sometimes on city streets, to deaden the noise. It is often used in the country for banking up houses in the winter. Willows grow quickly, and some of those that like wet places are often planted on sandy shores of lakes or streams, or on banks, that their roots may bind the sand or loose earth together and so keep the shore from shifting.