278 TREES FOE SHADE AND SALUBEITT. 



boundary lines of the different farms and estates and 

 their subdivisions painfully conspicuous. But the dis- 

 agreeable impressions caused by them are relieved by 

 our sense of the utility and advantages of trees dis- 

 posed in this formal manner ; for by no other arrange- 

 ment would they afford the adjoining fields equal protec- 

 tion from the winds. If our rustic ancestors had planted 

 all these formal rows of trees and shrubbery which nature 

 has raised in spite of them, they would have proved their 

 wisdom and foresight. 



It is often said that solid fences are a better protection 

 from the winds than trees and shrubs. It is true that 

 fences protect those objects that stand on their leeward side, 

 but they aggravate the force of the wind on their windward 

 side. When the wind strikes a solid fence, it creates a 

 forcible eddy; this would be broken and diminished 

 by the action of shrubbery which has no reverberating 

 power. The fence reverberates the wind, the shrubbery 

 absorbs it. If you throw water against a fence, it re- 

 bounds with nearly its original force ; if you throw water 

 against a mass of shrubbery, there is no appreciable re- 

 bound; it enters and penetrates the whole mass. The 

 action of clumps and large groups of trees, especially if 

 they contain their undergrowth, is very advantageous in 

 breaking the force of winds ; but of equal quantities of 

 wood and shrubbery, one part disposed in scattered groups, 

 the other drawn out into lines, and standing in the bor- 

 ders of fields, though the first would make a more har- 

 monious landscape scene, the last would be more service- 

 able to the local climate. Wood in the borders protects 

 the grounds on every side; and so long as the land is 

 divided among the people into small farms, and these 

 farms are also subdivided into fields, we look upon it as 

 expressing the thrift and prosperity of the inhabitants. 



Closely connected with the advantages of trees for 



