140 



QUARTERLY JOURNAL, 



like a satisfactory answer. I have been told by some that! they 

 have just been accustomed to such things, and think no more about 

 it ; by others that they do not like to go too near the hedges, for 

 fear of destroying the roots of the thorns — ^but a little reflection 

 soon convinced them that the leading roots of quicksets are gene- 

 rally placed beyond the reach of the plough ; and it will be found 

 that the root of a healthy hedge will not be confined to the space 

 that is left unbroken up, but will often be found in the ploughed 

 land. I think it could easily be shown that the farmer is a great 

 loser by allowing so much of his land to remain in an uncultivated 

 state ; he must pay for it all, and it must be a great drawback on 

 the productive part of the farm to make up lor the deficiency of 

 the unproductive. The space left by the plough untouched is, at 

 least, three feet from the fence, and where open ditches are left in 

 the field it is much more. Supposing a field to be one hundred 

 yards, by five hundred, this will give ten acres, one rood, twelve 

 poles, twenty-seven yards 3 and with a border three feet wide, left 

 unploughed, will take from it twelve hundred square yards, which 

 is about one rood ; and if we take fields of less size than ten acres, 

 the increase of waste land will be greatly augmented. But taking 

 it at one rood to every ten acres, this will give two and a-half 

 acres to every one hundred acres ; this is surely too much land to 

 be allowed to be in a state which is worse than useless, for we 

 will be able to show that it has a very baneful effect upon the cul- 

 tivated crop of the farmer ; and if we extend our calculation to 

 the fifteen millions of acres in Britain that are employed in the 

 cultivation of wheat, barley, rye, oats, beans, peas, clover, rye- 

 grass, roots and cabbages, by the plough, it will be found that an 

 enormous quantity of land is in a great measure lost, and I believe 

 the waste is greater in many parts of England than in Scotland. 

 When we bear in mind that many of the fields are small, and sepa- 

 rated from one another by enormous double hedges, surely some- 

 thing might be done to lessen the quantity of land that is, from 

 year to year, permitted to be unproductive ; five acres for every 

 three hundred acres is worth the looking after, and land, too, in 

 most cases, the best in the country. Supposing the land to be, on 

 an average, worth £2 per acre, and the farm consisting of two 

 hundred acres, what does the farmer get in return for his .£10 of 

 rent which he pays for the borders of his fields 1 The botanist 

 would, perhaps, meet with the richest harvest j he would not be 

 long in collecting one hundred or one hundred and fifty species of 

 plants, all more or less injurious to the farmer. Among the most 

 conspicuous will be the spear thistle, Cuicvs lanceolotu!,', common 

 ragwort, Stmecio Jacolxca^ black knapweed, Centaurea nigra^ and 

 many others that might be named, that prove a lasting scourge to- 

 the land, wherever they are permitted to multiply. When they 



