There is design and utility in this fascination of peculiarity. If individual distinction be but strongly marked, it signifies little of what character. Love of country often hangs upon features of the harshest and most fearful description, with which the associations and feelings become entwisted, as attachment to individual is often rivetted by fierce, austere, or even morose qualities. The narrow-leaved elm is valuable for forming the blocks and dead-eyes[12], and other wooden furniture of rigging, being particularly suitable for these purposes, from its hard and adhesive nature, and indisposition to crack or split, when exposed to sun and weather. We have observed many minor distinctions, perhaps individual, in the above kinds of elm, in figure, size and smoothness of leaf, in colour and roughness {58} of bark, &c. Some varieties or individuals of the English elm have the bark of the young twigs and branches covered with corky ridges: others want this excrescence. REDWOOD WILLOW, _or_ STAG’S HEAD OZIER,—_Salix fragilis_[13]. This kind of willow, once very common in the alluvial parts of Scotland, before the introduction of _Salix alba_, _S. Russelliana_, &c., is probably the most profitable timber that can be planted in such soils. It was our district’s maxim, that “the willow will purchase the horse before any other timber purchase the saddle,” on account of its very quick growth, and the value of its timber. It delights in {59} the rich easy clay by the sides of our _pows_ (the old Scottish term for those sluggish natural drains of our alluvial districts), throwing out its fibril roots in matted-like abundance under the water: it also flourishes in the more sandy and gravelly alluvion, by the sides of rivers and streams, which does not become too dry in summer.