Although the Locust, or False Acacia, is little planted now, it is only paying the penalty for having had its merits enormously exaggerated; just as human reputations sometimes sink into oblivion after a season of popularity achieved by the persistent "booming" of influential friends. The friend in this case was William Cobbett, who, on his return from the United States, about 1820, preached salvation to the timber grower through the planting of Robinia; "nothing in the timber way could be so great a benefit as the general cultivation of this tree." So great was the demand thus created that Cobbett himself started a nursery for the propagation and supply of Robinias, and so great is the virtue of a name that people refused the Locust-trees that every nurseryman had in stock and wished to sell, and would be content with nothing but Cobbett's Robinias, which could not be produced fast enough for the demand! They thought it was an entirely new introduction, though it had been grown in this country as an ornamental tree for nearly two centuries! Its wood is hard, strong, and durable, but liable to crack, and of limited utility. The Locust was introduced to Europe from North America early in the seventeenth century, and was then thought to be identical with the African Acacia. Linnaeus named the genus in honour of Jean Robin, a French botanist, whose son, an official at the Jardin des Plantes, was the first to cultivate the tree in Europe. It is a tree of light and graceful proportions, its branches being long and slender, and the long narrow leaves being broken up into a large number of small oval leaflets, arranged _pinnately_, that is, featherwise. The stipules, which are found at the base of the leaf-stalk in many plants, are in this genus converted into sharp spines. The flowers, of similar pea-shape to those of the Laburnum, are white and fragrant. They are in long loose racemes, which droop from the axils of the leaves in May. The legumes are very thin, and of a dark-brown hue. [Illustration: False Acacia, or Locust Tree. A, seed-pod.] [Illustration: _Pl. 150._ Locust Tree--summer.] [Illustration: _Pl. 151._ Bole of Locust Tree.] [Illustration: _Pl. 152._ Locust--winter.] This was one of the first American trees introduced to Europe, and its name of Locust came with it, the missionaries believing it must be the tree upon whose fruit, with the addition of wild honey, John the Baptist supported himself in the wilderness. It is also known as Silver Chain, in contradistinction to the Gold Chain or Laburnum; also as White Laburnum. The Larch (_Larix europaea_).