On Hedges. 35 
ea ae 
ples; the only rational ones I ever saw, for making thorn 
hedges. I have mentioned them to several persons who 
are cultivating hedges: but they do not give themselves 
the trouble to examine them: they let their gardeners take 
their own course. You will find his directions, I think, in 
his first volume. I have recited them in substance to Mr. 
Main, and added that his other countryman, Lord Kaims, 
had suggested a like mode of training a thorn hedge. Mr. 
Main had not heard of either Anderson or Lord Kaims. 
Yet he is distinguished for his intelligence. Mr. Main’s 
hedges I have repeatedly seen. If, as you mention, he pro- 
poses in his pamphlet, to s/ope the sides of his hedges, ta- 
pering them upwards, I have forgotten it. His own, how- 
ever are not so formed. He sets the plants only six or se- 
ven inches asunder, so that when well grown, the stems 
alone would form a fence. I have a thousand of Main’s 
hedge thorns, which I shall set in corresponding rows 
eventually to form the fences of the avenue from a pub- 
lic road to my house ; and I shall train them according 
to Anderson’s directions ; of which an essential one is, 
not to cut the top of the stem until it has acquired suf: 
ficient stability to resist even a bull. Till then, the sides 
only are to be pruned, or sheared, and in slopes upwards 
to the heighth of four and a half or five feet, to preserve 
the side shoots down to the ground. For if, like your 
hemlock hedge, they will retain the lower branches, 
when the sides are pruned perpendicularly, much more 
will they do it when the sides are sloped, and give them 
a perfect exposure to the sun, air, rams and dews. 
From what I had occasionally read of English thorn 
hedges, I doubted their constituting complete fences— 
I doubted the more, because it seemed to be a common 
