146 



^\)c laxmtfs iUontljlB faisitor. 



you iiuist clip off the top a little and the sides 

 near the top, leaving the bottom not much clip- 

 ped ; so that the side of the hedge may stope like 

 the side of u pyramid. The hedge will shoot 

 again immediately, and will have shoots six inch- 

 es long, perhaps, by October. Then, before win- 

 ter, you must clip it again, leaving some part of 

 the new shoots, that is to say, not cutting down to 

 to your last cut, but keeping the side always in a 

 pyramidical slope, so that the hedge may always 

 be wide at the bottom and sharp at the top. And 

 thus the hedge will go on getting higher and 

 higher, and wider and wider, till you liave it at the 

 height and thickness that you wish; and vvlien it 

 arrives at the point, there you may keep it. Ten 

 Jtd high, and Jive fed iliroitgh at the bottom, is what 

 1 should choose ; because then J have fence, shel- 

 ter and shade ; hut in the way oC fence, five feet 

 high will keep the boldest boy off from trees 

 loaded with fine ripe peaches, or from a patch of 

 ripe water-melons ; and, if it will do that, nothing 

 further need be said upon the subject. 'The height 

 is not great; but unless the assailant have wings, 

 he must be content with feasting his eyes; for if 

 he attempt to climb the hedge, his hands and 

 arms and legs are ftill of thorns in a moment; 

 and he retreats as the fox did from the grajies, 

 only with pain of body in addition to that of a 

 disappointed longing. I really feel some remorse 

 in thus plotting against the poor fellows ; but the 

 worst of it k, they will not be content with fair 

 play ; they will have the earliest in the season, 

 and the best as long as the season lasts; and there- 

 fore, I must, however reluctantly, shut them out 

 altogether. 



4(j. A hedge five clear feet high may be got in 

 m-!/e«c« from the day of planting. And, now 

 let us see what it has cost to get this fence round 

 my proposed gprdeu, which, as will be seen un- 

 der the next head, is to be 300 feet long and 150 

 feet wide, and which is, of course, to have 900 

 feet length of hedge. The plants are to be a foot 

 apart in the line, and there are to he two lines ; 

 consequently, there will be required 1800 plants, 

 orBuppose it to be lico thousand. I think it will he 

 strange indeed, if those plants camiot be raised 

 and sold, and two years old, for/(m dollars athou- 

 sand. I mean,_^>if, stout plants ; for if your plants 

 be poor, little slender things that have never been 

 transplanted, hut just pulled up out of the spot 

 where they were sown, your hedge will be a year 

 longer before it come to a fence, and will never, 

 without extraordinary care, be so good a hedge ; 

 for the plants ought all to be as nearly as possible 

 of eqxuil size ; else some get the start of others, 

 subdue them, and keep them down, and this 

 makes an uneven hedge, with weak parts in it. 

 And when the plants are first jjulled up out of 

 the seed-bed, they are too small to enable you 

 clearly to ascertain this inequalily of site. When 

 the plants are taken out of the seed-bed and 

 transplanted into a 7H(reen/, iliey are assorted by 

 the nursery men, who are used to the business. 

 The strong ones are transplanted into one place, 

 and the weak ones into another ; so that, when 

 they come to be used for hedge, they are already 

 equalized. If you can get plains three years old, 

 they are still better. They will make a com- 

 plete hedge sooner ; but if they be two years old, 

 have been transplanted, and are at the bottom as 

 big as a large goose quill, they are every thing 

 that is reqtiired. 



47. The cost of the plants is, then, four dollars. 

 The pruning of the roots and the planting is done 

 in England, for about three half pence a rod ; that 

 is to say, altout three cents. Let us allow twelve 

 cents here. 1 think I could earn two dollars gi.dav 

 nt this work ; but let us allow «ncugh. in <30,6 

 feet there are 54 rods and a few feet over ; and, 

 therefore, the planting of the hedge would cost 

 Rboul seven dollars. To keep it clean from weeds 

 would require about two days' work in a year for 

 five or six years — ta-elve dollars more. To do the 

 necessary clipping duiing the same time, would 

 require about thirty dollars, if it were done in an 

 extraordinary good manner, and with a pair of 

 garden shears. So that the expenses to get a com- 

 plete hedge round the garden would be as fol- 

 lows :— $ c. 



Plants, 4 00 



Planting 7 00 



Cultivation, 12 00 



Clipping, .30 00 



Totel 53 000 



48. And thus are a feme, shcHer, and shade of 

 everlasting duration, lor a garden cetitaining an 

 acre of land, to be obtained for this tjUling sum ! 

 Of the beauty of such a hedge it is impossible for 

 any one who has not seen it, to form an ide^a:— 

 couuasted witji a wooden, or even a brick fence, 

 it is like the land of Canaan compaied with the 

 deserts of Arabia. The leaf is beautiful in hue 

 as well as in shape. It is one of tl»e very earliest 

 in the s|iring. It preserves its bright green du- 

 ring the summer heats. The branches grow ^o 

 thick, and present thorns so numerous, and those 

 so sharp, as to make the fence wholly impenetra- 

 ble. The shelter it gives in the early part of the 

 spring, and the shad-e it gives (on the other side 

 of the garden) in the beat of sunmier, are so 

 itiuoh more effectual than those given by wood or 

 brick or stone fences, that there is no corii|)arison 

 between them. The primrose and the violet, which 

 are the earliest of all the /lowers of the fields in 

 England, always make their first appearance un- 

 der the wings of the haw-thorn. Goldsmith, in 

 describing female innocence and simplicity, says, 

 "Sweet as primrose peeps beneath the thorn." — 

 This haw-thorn is the favorite plant of England : 

 it is seen as a flowering shrub in all gentlemen's 

 pleasure-grounds : it is the constant o nanient of 

 paddocks and parks; the fii'st appeaiance of its 

 lilossoms is hailed by old and young as the sign 

 of pleasant weather; iis branches of flowers are 

 emphatically called " Alay," bt cause, according 

 to the old style, its tinje of blonmiug was about 

 the first of May, which, in England, is called 

 "May-day;" iu short, take away" the haw-thoru, 

 and you take away the greatest beauty of the 

 English fields and gardens, and not a small one 

 from English rural poetry. 



49. And why should America not possess this 

 most beautiful and useful plant ? She has En- 

 glish gew-gaws, English play-actors, English 

 cards, and English dice and billiards; English 

 fooleries and English vices enough, in all con- 

 science ; and why not English hedges, instead of 

 post and rail and board fences? It; instead of 

 these sterile-looking and cheerless enclosm-es, the 

 gardens and meadows and fields, in the neigh- 

 borhood of New York, and other cities and towns, 

 were divided by quick-set hedges, what a ditfer- 

 cnce would the alteration make in the look, and 

 in the real value too, of those gardens, meadows, 

 and fields! 



50. It may be said, perhaps, that after you have 

 got your hedge to the desired height, it iiiust still 

 be kept clipped twice iu the summer ; and that, 

 therefore, it tlie fence is everlasting, the trouble 

 of it is also everlasting, lint, in the first place, 

 you can have nothing g-oot/ from the earth with- 

 t)ut annual care. In the next place, a wooden 

 fence will soon want nailing and palchinir annu- 

 ally, during the years of its comparatively short 

 duration. And, lastly, what is the annual ex- 

 pense of clipping, when yon have got your hedge 

 to its proper height and uidlii, and vvlien the 

 work may be done with a long-handled hook, in- 

 stead of a [lair of shears, which is necessary at 

 first ? Iu England such work is done for a penny 

 a rod, twice in the summer. Allow three times as 

 much in America, and then the annual expense 

 of the garden hedge will be less than/our dollars 

 a year. 



51. Thus, tlien, at the end of the frsl twenty 

 years, the hedge woulil have cost a hundred and 

 nine dollars, and, forever afier, it would cost only 

 eighty dollars in twenty years. Now, can a neat 

 boarded fence, if only eight feet liigb, and to last 

 twenty years, be put up l<ir less than six dollars a 

 rod? I am couviced that it cannot; and, then, 

 here is an expense for every twenty years ol' three 

 hundred and forty-eight dollars. Alocust fence, I 

 allow, will last forever ; but, then, what will a 

 fence, all of locml, cost '? Besides the diflereiice 

 in the look of the thing; besides the vast difler- 

 eiice ill the nature and effect of the shelter and 

 the shade; and besides that, afier all, you have, 

 iu the wooden fence, no efiectual protection a- 

 gainst invaders. 



r>'2. However, there is one tlung which must 

 not be omitted; and that is, that the hedge will 

 not be a fence, or, at least, I would not look upon 

 it as such, until it had been planted six years. — 

 Duriiig these six years, there must be a fence all 

 round on the outside of it. to keep oft' pigs, sheep, 

 and cattle ; for as to the two-legged assailants, 

 nothing will keep them oft' except a quick-set 

 hedge. If I had to make this kmporary/ence, 



it should be a dead Jiedge, made of s|)lit hickory 

 rods, like those tha.t hoops are made oi; and with 

 stakes of the stoutest parts of the .same rods, or 

 of oak saplings, or some such things. The work- 

 manship of this, if I hail a Hampshire or Susse-x 

 hedger, would not cost more than six cents a rod ; 

 perhaps the stuff' would not cost more than a 

 quarter of a dollar a rod ; and this fence would 

 last, with a little mending, as long as I should 

 want it. 15ut as few good hedgers come from 

 England, and as those who do come appear to 

 think, that they have done enough of hedging in 

 their own country, or if they be set to hedging 

 here, seem to look upon theinselves as a sort of 

 conjurors, and to expect to be paid and treated ac- 

 cordingly ; the best way, probably, is to put up a 

 temporary post-aiid-rail fence, sufficient to keep 

 out a sucking pig; and to keep this fence stand- 

 ing until the hedge has arrived at the age of six 

 years, as before mentioned. 



53. There yet remains one advantage, and that 

 not a small one, that a quick-set hedge possesses 

 over every other sort of fence ; and that is, that 

 it effectually keeps out poidtry, the depredations 

 of which, in a nice garden, are so intolerable, 

 that it frequently becomes a question whether 

 the garden shall be abandoned, or the poultry de- 

 stroyed. Fowls seldom or never fly over a fence. 

 They, fiom motives of prudence, first •alight u;;- 

 on it, and then drop down on the other side; or, 

 if they perceive danger, turn short about and drop 

 back again, making a noise expressive of their 

 disappointment. Now, fowls will alight on wood- 

 en, brick, or stone fijnces ; but never on a quick-set 

 hedge, which aft'ords no steady lodgement li^r their 

 feet, and which wounds their legs, and thighs, 

 and bodies with its thorns. 



54. What has been said here of forming a 

 heilge, applies to meadows and fields as well as 

 to gardens; observing, however, that in all cases, 

 the ground ought to be well prepared, ami cattle, 

 sheep and pigs kept effectually off', until the 

 hedge arrives at its sixth year. 



55. If I am asked how the white-thorn plants 

 are to be had in jlinerica, I answer, that I saw a 

 tree of haw-tlioru at McAllister's tavern, near 

 Harrisbnrg, iu Penusylvania, /ont/crf icith red ber- 

 ries. In short, one large tree, or bush, would soon 

 stock the whole country ; and they may be brought 

 from England either in plant or in berry. But 

 there are many here already. If more are want- 

 ed, they can be ha<l any month of December, be- 

 ing shipped from England in barrels, half sand 

 wid half berries, in November. The berries, which 

 are called haws, are ripe in November. They are 

 beaten down trom the tree, and cleared from 

 leaves and bits of wood. Then they are mixed 

 with sand or earth — four bushels of "sand, or of 

 earth, to a bushel of haws. They are thus put 

 into a cellar, or other cool place ; and here they 

 remain, always about as moist as conunon earth, 

 until sixteen months after they are put iu ; that 

 is to say, through a winter, a summer, and another 

 winter ; and then they are sown (in America) as 

 soon as the frost is clean out of the ground. — 

 They ought to he sown in little drills ; the drills 

 a foot a part, and the haws about as thick as i)eas 

 in the drills. Here they come up; and when 

 they have stood till the next year, you proceed 

 with them in the manner pointed out in para- 

 graph 40. 



5(3. These haws may be had from Liverpool, 

 from Loudon, or from almost any port in Great 

 Britain or Ireland. But they can be had only in 

 the months of November and December; seldom 

 in the latter, for the birds eat them at a very early 

 period. They are ripe early in November; and 

 half haws, half sand, may be had, I dare say, for 

 two dollars a barrel, at any place. Three barrels 

 would fence a farm ! and, as America owes to 

 Europe her wheat, why be ashamed to add fian- 

 ces to the debt .' iJut (and with this 1 conclude) 

 if there be a resolution formed to throw all lands 

 to common, rather than take the trifling trouble 

 to make live fences, I do hope that my good 

 neighbors will not ascribe these remarks to any 

 disposition in me to call in question the wisdom 

 of that resolution. 



I 



The Eccaleobion in New York. 



Mrs. Childs, in a letter to the Boston Courier, 

 gives the Ibllow ing amusing account of the ope- 

 rations of the egg batcher, or eccaleoliion, now 

 exhibiting iu New York, and which has been 

 visited by niultitudei". It is indeed a curious af- 



