=Poplar= wood is woolly and tenacious, and for this reason is used for the bottoms of stone carts and barrows. It is well adapted for making packing cases, railway brakes, weather boarding, and for purposes where lightness is of greater importance than durability. The Abele, or white Poplar, produces perhaps the most valuable timber of any of the numerous species. =Scotch Spruce= and =Silver Fir= may all be classed under the same heading, being of about equal value and applicable to similar purposes, viz., for sleepers and pitwood, boarding under slates, headings for barrels, soap boxes, temporary fencing, also for conversion into planking for lead works, and for all erections of a temporary kind. =Sycamore= timber is peculiarly white and smooth and free from grain, which makes it very valuable. It is used for curtain rings, churns, butter prints, for the backs of violins, for founders’ patterns and cutting boards, and in the making of wooden vessels and furniture. For calendar machines and in cotton and jute factories it is much employed. =Walnut= timber is much in demand for gun and rifle stocks, for the best class of furniture, and for veneering purposes. =Willow= is famous for the production of the best class of cricket bats and for artificial limbs and crutches. It also makes good charcoal. =Yew= wood is valuable when employed for veneering. CHAPTER XXVII WILLOWS FOR BASKET-MAKING Previous to the war, preferential railway and boat rates, aided by keen foreign competition, wellnigh rendered the time-honoured industry of basket-making a thing of the past in this country. The best classes of osiers, cleaned and ready for manipulation, were delivered to our principal markets from Continental sources at so low a price that competition on our part was almost out of the question. There are still, however, a few stations, such as those in Bedfordshire, the fen districts of Lincoln and Cambridge, and along certain reaches of the Thames, where willow culture is engaged in, though not in the same energetic way as was the case some half a century ago. About 7,000 acres, producing roughly 20,000 tons of osiers, are cultivated in this country at the present time, many small plantations having been grubbed out and the land laid down in other crops during the past five and twenty years.