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TJie Country Gentlcnmiis Magazine 



THE HEDGEROWISM OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. 



By J. J. Mechi. 



HOW many miles of hedgerows are 

 there in the United Kingdom ? What 

 is the average width of the banks on which 

 they stand ? How many yards on each side 

 of the bank do the robber roots extend ? And 

 how many hundred thousand miles of un- 

 necessary wide ditches are there ? How 

 many trees per acre are there in our 

 46,000,000 of acres ? Here we want Mr 

 Fonblanque, and he certainly could readily 

 obtain for us some of the measurements and 

 quantities. I am led to make these remarks by 

 a conversation I had the other day with a par- 

 ticularly intelligent gentleman, not a hundred 

 miles from Exeter, who has greatly improved 

 his land. As we were walking over my 

 fields, or rather field (for my farm is nearly 

 all field), I said, •' How large are your fields ? " 

 *' Well," he replied, "I have greatly enlarged 

 them. In one case I threw six fields into 

 one." I said, " How large is it now?" To 

 my great astonishment he replied, "6 acres!" 

 Perceiving my surprise, " Oh ! " he said, 

 " there is a parish not far from mine where 

 there are 170 miles of hedgerows ! " So I 

 thought how many parishes has Devonshire. 

 Essex has 420, and Suffolk many more. 

 Devonshire is much larger than either. 

 I said once, at the late Sir Robert Peel's, 

 that I thought we could safely spare 

 500,000 miles of fences, with their accom- 

 panying pollards, but I am afraid I took very 

 much too limited an estimate of our national 

 hedgerowism. Imagine a nation like ours, 

 wanting in one-third of its daily bread (which 

 it obtains from foreigners), devoting an im- 

 mense area of its precious soil to the growth 

 of bushes or almost worthless timber. 

 Before we worked our coal mines or had im- 

 ported wood (London had no coals some 

 three centuries ago), the growth of timber 

 was a national necessity, but the pastoral and 



wooden ages are fast fading away, the latter 

 forced out economically by the general use of 

 the produce of our coal mines — I had almost 

 said our gold mines — for we raise 100,000,000 

 tons a-year, and most of us know the price, 

 if not the value, of a ton of coal. Formerly, 

 everything Avas wooden, but now we have the 

 iron and steam age, and everything is of 

 iron, or economically should be so. A little 

 more than a century ago we had no roads or 

 railways, no steam-engines or steam-vessels, 

 therefore, even had we then desired to use 

 coal and iron, they were both comparatively 

 inaccessible and unavailable. Now, gates, 

 fences, and ' all the farm implements 

 should be of iron, from ploughs and harrows 

 to pails and pig troughs. Oh ! but then, 

 Mr Mechi, you are ruining our climate 

 by cutting down trees, and removing the 

 fences, thus diminishing rainfall and shelter. 

 I at once admit that Spain and many other 

 Continental countries, with dry soil and burn- 

 ing sun, have committed this fatal error ; but 

 in these small islands of cloud and mist, and 

 stiff cold wet clay wanting sun, we run no 

 such risks, especially Devonshire and Corn- 

 wall, pushed into the broad Atlantic, and 

 washed by the hot and moist Gulf stream. 

 As to shelter for liv<; stock, we are gradu- 

 ally coming to artificial shelter, and a non- 

 turning out system for our cattle and fatten- 

 ing sheep. If we could calculate in ^ s. d, 

 the amount of loss caused by small fields and 

 numerous headlands, by short lands and 

 crooked fields ; by weed-producing banks, 

 by the roots of trees extending cunningly 

 below the ploughed land for some 30 to 

 50 yards, thus robbing the subsoil of its 

 fertility, the grand total of loss would amaze 

 and enlighten us. This subject is well 

 worthy of consideration by landowners, who 

 desire to increase their rentals. 



