144 STUDIES IN THE FIELD AND FOREST. 



many other native flowers of exceeding beauty, while 

 the rest of the field is devoted to tillage. 



An ignorant agricultural boor, whose mind was never 

 taught to stray beyond the barnyard or potato-patch, 

 might grudge nature this narrow strip on each side of 

 his fences, though she never fails to crowd it with 

 beauty. I have seen indeed intelligent farmers who 

 seemed to consider it an offence against neatness and 

 order, to allow nature these little privileges, and who 

 employed their hired men to keep down every plant that 

 dared to peep out from underneath the fence, without a 

 license from the cultivator. By encouraging this mis 

 cellaneous growth of woody and herbaceous plants on 

 each side of every rustic fence, we provide an important 

 means of security for the birds, and supply them, in the 

 close vicinity of our dwellings, with an abundance of 

 those seeds and berries which are necessary for their 

 subsistence. 



Such a miscellaneous hedge-row would constitute a 

 perfect aviary for certain species of birds ; and the ad 

 vantages they would confer upon the farmer, by ridding 

 his land of noxious insects, would amply compensate 

 for the space thus left unimproved. The farmer seldom 

 raises any crops in this narrow space ; but, like the dog 

 in the manger, he neither uses it himself nor will he 

 leave it to nature and the birds. Once in two or three 

 years, he lets a fire run over it ; or, at an expense which 

 is entirely useless to himself, he wantonly cuts down 

 every beautiful thing that springs up there to remind 

 him, while employed in the labors of the field, of the 

 primitive charms of nature. 



A common hedge-row would occupy as much space 

 as this rustic fence, including the plants on each side of 

 it; and no clipped hedge-row could be made half so 



