£ _s._ _d._ Rent, rates and incidentals 2 10 0 Hoeing and cleaning 1 8 0 Harvesting 1 10 0 ———————————— £5 8 0 Yield about 5 tons. 20 0 0 ———————————— Profit £15 8 0 THIRD AND SUBSEQUENT YEARS. Expenditure £6. Yield £24. Profit £18. If the ground is properly cultivated and losses made good, the plantation should give a yield similar to the third year for fully a quarter of a century. In the low-lying district between Taunton, Bridgwater and Langport, in Somerset, willow or osier culture is largely engaged in. The system generally adopted is that the owner or tenant of the land planted to willows keeps the land free from weeds to prevent the withies being choked. This entails an outlay of about 25_s._ per acre per annum if properly done. The crops are measured and marked out in half-acre lots and sold in October or November. The purchasers cut and remove them, and in some cases convert them into baskets, basket-chairs, and such like. In other cases the purchasers select and bundle the crop in the regulation sizes and sell them to dealers. The results of some recent sales are as follows: One field of 11½ acres realized £132 and the first two half-acres, being remarkably good withies, made £19 10_s._ Three other fields, containing 16 acres in all, made £161 10_s._; and three others, containing 22½ acres, £222 2_s._ 6_d._ The agricultural annual rental value of this land when pasture, before it was planted to willows, was under £2 per acre. From the above it will be seen that if prudently entered upon and economically carried out the cultivation of willows for basket-making is a paying industry, and as for some years to come foreign supplies will be barred to our markets, the enterprise should prove highly remunerative. CHAPTER XXVIII UTILIZING WASTE FOREST PRODUCE