96 



WOODS AND FOBESTS OF PEBTHSHIBE. [Dec, 



the men engaged in the woi'k having left to take part in the Battle of CuUoden, 

 which was fought in 1745. The dyke was completed that year, and, in accord- 

 ance with the usual custom, the hedge was planted in the following year. The 

 hedge bears evidence of having been annually pruned and trimmed for the first 

 forty or fifty years. For about twenty years afterwards the trees appeal' to have 

 been allowed to grow wild, until their wide-spreading branches became an ob- 

 struction on the highway. For the last fifty years or more the hedge has been 

 regularly cut on the side next the road, but the side next the wood has not been 

 trimmed for thirty or forty years, there being no necessity for interfering with 

 that side. It is absolutely necessary, however, that the side next the road be 

 regularly pruned, and the result of this is not only to keep the road clear, but to 



•THE GREAT BEECH HEDGE AT MEIKLEOUR. 



give to the row a truly hedge-like character. The operation of pruning the 

 hedge is carried out every five or six years, and, from its great height and extent, 

 the work is one of no ordinary labour and difficulty. The operation, however, 

 is now much facilitated by the adoption of an ingenious, but simple, method, 

 which the Dowager Marchioness of Lansdowne observed in use upon the tall 

 Lime hedges at Versailles. Her ladyship was so much struck by the machine in 

 use there, that she procured a plan of it, and had one constructed by Mr. 

 Scrimgeour, Methven, under tlie superintendence of Mr. Matheson, the land 

 steward. The machine is simply a double ladder, 30 ft. high, supported on four 

 wheels, and by means of which the heavier branches are cut with a single stroke 



