ttbe (Barren 



help to make your dry hedges for your young 

 plantations, or be profitable for the oven, and 

 make good bavin. There are some yet who 

 would have no stakes cut from the trees, save 

 here and there one, so as to leave half the head 

 naked, and the other standing ; but the over- 

 hanging boughs will kill what is under them, 

 and ruin the tree, so pernicious is this half- 

 topping ; let this be a total amputation for a 

 new and lusty spring. There is nothing more 

 prejudicial to subnascent young trees than, 

 when newly trimmed and pruned, to have their 

 (as yet raw) wounds poisoned with continual 

 dripping, as is well observed by Mr. Nourse ; 

 but this is meant of repairing decayed hedges. 

 For stakes in the above work, oak is to be pre- 

 ferred, though some will use elder, but it is not 

 good, or the blackthorn and crab-tree ; in moor- 

 ish ground withy, ash, maple, and hazel, but 

 not lasting, driven well in at every yard of 

 interval, both before and after they are bound, 

 till they have taken the hard earth, and are 

 very fast ; and even your plashed hedges need 

 some small thorns to be laid over to protect the 

 spring from cattle and sheep till they are some- 

 what fortified, and the doubler the winding is 

 lodged the better, which should be beaten, and 

 forced down together with the stakes as equally 

 as may be. Note that in sloping your windings, 



