WAY-SIDE HINTS 



controlled by the adoption of movable hurdles. 

 The clearing up of those old lines of hawthorn 

 may give delight to the agricultural eye, but 

 the lover of the picturesque will lament their 

 destruction. The cumbrous hedge-rows, too, 

 of Devon and of the Channel Isles (huge dykes 

 of earth with hedge and trees springing from 

 their top) are yielding to the demands of new 

 and progressive culture. I recall many a loi- 

 tering of a summer's day between these huge 

 banks of green, within sound of the Dart, or 

 of the Exe, or of the beat of the water in La 

 Fret — the primroses dotting the close sward, 

 the hedges shutting out the light, the scattered 

 boles wound round with cloaks of ivy, the 

 scant, scraggy limbs interlacing above, and a 

 constant moisture upon the macadamized way, 

 giving life to little truant mats of mosses. But 

 near to the centres of travel and improvement, 

 all these delightful old ridgy banks of moss, 

 and earth, and hedges, and trees, have disap- 

 peared. The keen tenants, with the permission 

 of the landlords, are hunting them down in the 

 retired districts. And no wonder ; they occupied 

 full twenty feet in width; every rod of them 

 shaded a good perch of grain land ; they offered 

 capital breeding places for scores of rabbits. 

 But though a great change is going on in this 



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