bark falls to the ground on the other side of the brake, and the now white stick is thrown to the right, where a pile soon accumulates.  The peel is handy for tying up, and when dried makes a capital material for lighting fires.  This stripping of the osiers is a most busy time in the neighbourhood of the large plantations—­almost like hop-picking—­for men, women, and children can all help.  It does not require so much strength as skill and patience.

After the peeling the sticks have to be dried by exposure to the sun; they are then sorted into lengths, and sold in bundles.  If it is desired to keep them any time they must be thoroughly dried, or they will ‘heat’ and rot and become useless.  This willow harvest is looked forward to by the cottagers who live along the rivers as an opportunity for earning extra money.  The quantity of osier thus treated seems immense, and yet the demand is said to be steady, and as the year advances the price of the willow rises.  It is manufactured into all kinds of baskets—­on farms, especially arable farms, numbers of baskets are used.  Clothes baskets, market baskets, chaff baskets, bassinettes or cradles, &c., are some few of the articles manufactured from it.  Large quantities of willow, too, are worked up unpeeled into hampers of all kinds.  The number of hampers used in these days is beyond computation, and as they are constantly wearing out, fresh ones have to be made.  An advantage of the willow is that it enables the farmer to derive a profit from land that would otherwise be comparatively valueless.  Good land, indeed, is hardly fitted for osier; it would grow rank with much pith in the centre, and therefore liable to break.  On common land, on the contrary, it grows just right, and not too coarse.  Almost any scrap or corner does for willow, and if properly tended it speedily pays for the labour.

The digging and preparation of the ground gives employment, and afterwards the weeding and the work required to clean the channels that conduct water round and through the beds.  Then there is the cutting and the peeling, and finally the basket-making; and thus the willow, though so common as to be little regarded, finds work for many hands.

CHAPTER XX

HODGE’S FIELDS

The labourer working all the year round in the open air cannot but note to some degree those changes in tree and plant which coincide with the variations of his daily employment.  Early in March, as he walks along the southern side of the hedge, where the dead oak leaves still cumber the trailing ivy, he can scarcely avoid seeing that pointed tongues of green are pushing up.  Some have widened into black-spotted leaves; some are notched like the many-barbed bone harpoons of savage races.  The hardy docks are showing, and the young nettles have risen up.  Slowly the dark and grey hues of winter are yielding to the lively tints of spring.  The blackthorn has white buds on its lesser branches, and the warm rays of the sun have drawn forth the buds on one favoured hawthorn in a sheltered nook, so that the green of the coming leaf is visible.  Bramble bushes still retain their forlorn, shrivelled foliage; the hardy all but evergreen leaves can stand cold, but when biting winds from the north and east blow for weeks together even these curl at the edge and die.