50 The Pyracantha, or evefgreen-thom. 



fore necessary that our hedges should possess the dou- 

 ble properties of closeness and strength to guard against 

 both those species of trespassers. The Pyracantha, 

 by itself, on a good soil, is the best plant that I know 

 of, to effect both of those purposes. On a poorer soil 

 it will often require the aid of ditching, but the ditch 

 ought never to be made, until the hedge is four or 

 five years old, by which delay, the hedge can be much 

 more easily and effectually cultivated, than if it had 

 been planted on the bank of a ditch at first, as in the 

 British method : this however cannot be done without 

 the assistance of temporary fences. But on a fiat, rich 

 and deep soil, such as the prairies of the west, where 

 timber cannot be obtained, a five or six foot ditch, and 

 bank proportional, may answer for the Pyracantha 

 pretty well, without any other protective or temporary 

 fence ; planting a double hedge row in this case, one 

 in the usual place outside, next the ditch, and another 

 near the foot of the bank, inside, which will, with very 

 little training, cover the whole bank, in a few years, 

 with a complete coat of resistance. On land that is 

 but tolerably good, one row of the hedge thorn, and 

 another of the Pyracantha, at the distance of four or five 

 feet from the former, and on the outside of it, will make 

 an excellent fence in a few years, where the hedge- 

 thorn alone would be a long time easily pervaded, both 

 by large and small animals : even with the aid of the 

 troublesome and tedious operation of splashing. I am 

 sorry that it is out of my power, by any description 

 that I am capable of writing, to give the reader a clear 

 and correct idea of a hedge of this double description, 



