FENCES, COUNTRY AND GATES. 249 



places, often leaves a gap at others. Consequently, 

 bullfinches are gradually going out of fashion in the 

 Shires, and are generally converted into cut-and-laid 

 fences, of which there is an example in Fig. 106. 

 This alteration is usually made in winter, and is 

 effected by cutting with a bill-hook about half way 

 through the small trunks of the hawthorn shrubs, 

 turning them to the left, and interlacing their tops 

 and their branches, as we may see in Fig. 107, which 

 shows us the appearance Fig. 106 presented during 

 its construction. A cut-and-laid is usually about 

 3 feet 9 inches high, and is the wrong kind of obstacle 

 to " chance," because it is very stiff. Some hunting- 

 people who know very little about country life, call a 

 cut-and-laid fence a " stake-and-bound fence," which 

 (Fig. 1 08) is an artificial barrier made by putting a 

 row of stakes in the ground and twisting brushwood 

 between them. Stake-and-bound fences are common 

 in Kent, and are not nearly so dangerous to " chance" 

 as a cut-and-laid, because the ends of their stakes are 

 only stuck in the ground. The practice of cutting and 

 laying hedges is so general in the Midlands, that we 

 rarely see a bullfinch which does not show signs of 

 having been tampered with in this manner. Even the 

 height to which the hawthorn bushes in Fig. 90 have 

 attained, does not entirely conceal the traces left by 

 the bill-hook, some years before this photograph was 

 taken. 



Posts and rails are often used in the Shires to 

 strengthen decrepit fences (Fig. 109), and to take their 



