In some districts the osier plantations give employment to a considerable number of persons.  The tall poles are made into posts and rails; the trunks of the pollard trees when thrown are cut into small timber that serves many minor purposes; the brushwood or tops that are cut every now and then make thatching sticks and faggots; sometimes hedges are made of a kind of willow wicker-work for enclosing gardens.  It is, however, the plantations of withy or osier that are most important.  The willow grows so often in or near to water that in common opinion the association cannot be too complete.  But in the arrangement of an osier-bed water is utilised, indeed, but kept in its place—­i.e. at the roots, and not over the stoles.  The osier should not stand in water, or rise, as it were, out of a lake—­the water should be in the soil underneath, and the level of the ground higher than the surface of the adjacent stream.

Before planting, the land has to be dug or ploughed, and cleared; the weeds collected in the same way as on an arable field.  The sticks are then set in rows eighteen inches apart, each stick (that afterwards becomes a stole) a foot from its neighbours of the same row.  At first the weeds require keeping down, but after awhile the crop itself kills them a good deal.  Several willows spring from each planted stick, and at the end of twelve months the first crop is ready for cutting.  Next year the stick or stole will send up still more shoots, and give a larger yield.

The sorts generally planted are called Black Spanish and Walnut Leaf.  The first has a darker bark, and is a tough wood; the other has a light yellow bark, and grows smoother and without knots, which is better for working up into the manufactured article.  Either will grow to nine feet high—­the average height is six or seven feet.  The usual time for cutting is about Good Friday—­that is, just before the leaf appears.  After cutting, the rods are stacked upright in water, in long trenches six inches deep prepared for the purpose, and there they remain till the leaf comes out.  The power of growth displayed by the willow is wonderful—­a bough has only to be stuck in the earth, or the end of a pole placed in the brook, for the sap to rise and shoots to push forth.

When the leaf shows the willows are carried to the ‘brakes,’ and the work of stripping off the bark commences.  A ‘brake’ somewhat resembles a pair of very blunt scissors permanently fixed open at a certain angle, and rigidly supported at a convenient height from the ground.  The operator stands behind it, and selecting a long wand from the heap beside him places it in the ‘brake,’ and pulls it through, slightly pressing it downwards.  As he draws it towards him, the edges of the iron tear the bark and peel it along the whole length of the stick.  There is a knack in the operation, of course, but when it is acquired the wand is peeled in a moment by a dexterous turn of the wrist, the