68 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



protecting fence on one side of the young hedge. This method 

 has been fairly successful in encouraging young growth, but the 

 writer thinks that if the old stumps are left too long, they will 

 prevent the young shoots from getting a full supply of nutriment. 

 This may also be said of the nicking method. 



The only other way will be to cut the hedge down to the 

 ground, but if this has to be done, protecting fences on each 

 side will have to be left for a long time. This, although more 

 expensive, would help the young shoots to come to a size for 

 layering sooner than the other methods. 



Comparison of the different methods described. — Of the three 

 methods of hedge management described, the writer is greatly 

 in favour of the one employed in Montgomeryshire ; the cost 

 of brushing each hedge every year may seem prohibitive, but 

 when it is thus treated and well layered every ten years or so, 

 there is little further expense to be incurred on it, as compared 

 with that to be incurred on a hedge that has been allowed to 

 become thin and open at the bottom, and which requires 

 continual patching with rails, or needs two or three wires along 

 the bottom to keep sheep out. 



The principal good point in the Dumfriesshire method is that 

 the young shoots need no protection for a year or two, except 

 where the hedge is bounding a permanent pasture field, or where 

 a green crop of turnips is being fed off by sheep, since two or 

 three fallow crops generally follow the ploughing of "ley" 

 ground. With a six years' farming rotation, the hedges might 

 be layered either every six or every twelve years. If six years be 

 chosen, they should be brushed every year for four years, left 

 alone for two years, and then layered. Except in the case of 

 a very good hedge, a six-year rotation would be better than one 

 of twelve years. 



Most of the foregoing remarks apply principally to farm 

 hedges. But a plantation hedge is, as a rule, also partly a farm 

 hedge, and in the opinion of the writer, it should be treated 

 as such. 



Advantages and disadvantages of a t/torn hedge for a planta- 

 tion. — If the writer had to choose between planting a thorn 

 hedge and erecting a fence round a new plantation, he would 

 certainly choose the latter. If there were already a. good hedge 

 on the ground, he would say keep it and keep it well ; but if it 

 were one that would require patching every few years, or 



