122 MY FARM. 



munerative crops. If otherwise, let the wild growth 

 enjoy its wantonness. It may come to be a little 

 scattered range of wood in time, and so have its 

 alue; it may offer shelter against the sweep of 

 winds ; it will give a nursing place for the birds, and 

 the birds are the farmer s friends. 



I am loth to believe that the natural graces of 

 woodland and shrubbery are incompatible with agri 

 cultural interests ; and a true farm economy seems to 

 me better directed in making more thorough the 

 tillage of the open lands, than in making Quixotic 

 foray upon the bushy fastnesses of outlying pastures. 

 &quot;When a dense population shall have rendered ne 

 cessary the employment of every foot of our area for 

 food-growing purposes, it may be incumbent on us to 

 cleave all the rocks, and to clear away all the copses : 

 but until then, I shall love to treat with a tender con- 

 sideration the green mantle albeit of brambles and 

 wild vines with which Kature covers her rough 

 nesses ; and I seem to see in the streaming tendrils, 

 and in the nodding tassels of bloom which bind and 

 tuft these wild thickets of the hills, a sampler of 

 vegetable luxuriance, which every summer s day 

 provokes and defies all our rivalry of the fields. 



What is called tidiness, is by no means always 

 taste ; and I am slow to believe that farm economy 

 must be at eternal war with grace. I know well that 



