456 ON CUTTING AND LA YING HEDGES. [April 



abundant fruit crop. We would take the liberty of recommending 

 farmers and others, who have orchards or gardens that may not have 

 been too well attended to in past years, to give them a good top- 

 dressing of well-rotted manure, and they will find both flower and 

 fruit all the better of it. We give this advice all the more readily 

 because we know very many of the Carse orchards have been sadly 

 neglected of late, and almost allowed to run to waste ; little or 

 nothing being done in the way of pruning or manuring. We are 

 glad, however, to learn that a change for the better has commenced. 

 Some of our more enterprising landlords, as well as some farmers 

 who have orchards, have been pruning very extensively, and also 

 adding greatly to their stock of trees as well as bushes. Some of 

 our professional gardeners, as well as amateurs, have been taking a 

 lesson from our farmers, and using fish manure in the hope of doing 

 something grand at our local shows. 



We know one gardener who was using it largely in a plot of 

 gooseberries ; he said to us in his own hopeful but expressive way, 

 that he expected to be able to let us see some " snorers at the show 

 this year." Every success to him in this, which, beyond every 

 other pursuit, unites real pleasure with profit. E. M. E. 



C'AESE OF Gowr.iE. 



OJV CUTTING AND LAYING HEDGES. 



BY J. CHAKLES KING. 



TRIMMING well-gi'own quick- holly, or hornbeam hedges, is 

 simple, straightforward work, and is mostly well done ; but old 

 neglected hedges, such as usually separate fields, mostly in conjunc- 

 tion with ditches, require different treatment. When the hedge 

 has to be trimmed, it is termed in some parts " bucking : " this, if 

 done every year to good hedges, improves their serviceable uses 

 against sheep, pigs, and stock ; when neglected, as it usually is, the 

 hedge becomes a sprawling overgrowth of stunted trees and bushes, 

 and only the semblance of a fence, to be seen on neglected farms 

 and on many estates, especially on the skirts of woods. 



If this neglect has to be rectified by job work, the nuister must 

 know what is to be done, and the hedger how to do it. Merely 

 saying to a man, " Go and clean that ditch, and lay that old hedge 

 at so much per rod," is just the way to have a bad hedge made 

 prospectively worse. 



The old hedge is commonly cut down, leaving here and there 

 pieces for " layering " or " laying." I prefer the former word. The 



