Book IV. 



COMPOUND HEDGE FENCES. 



483 



upon the thorns, they are in safety from the frost : but it is not safe at any time in frosty weather to leave 

 them, for even one night, with less earth; for the plants may not only be frosted in that time, but the 

 earth may be put in such a state by the frost as to be unfit for working the next day ; and should the frost 

 afterwards continue so hard as to prevent working altogether, the plant thus left exposed will inevitably 

 perish. The plants may be laid another length or two of the cord, if the weather appear favourable, and 

 the plants be quite safe, before any more of the ditch be removed, as the last operation on the ditch and 

 bank will be more uniform, and look better when a considerable length of it is finished at the same time, 

 than when joinings are visible at short intervals ; but in frosty or very wet weather, the sooner a piece of 

 it is finished, the better it is for the labourers and the work itself. This concludes the second part of our 

 work, and its effects are represented by the annexed figure ( 465.), exhibiting the laid plant («) and 



the trodden part of the earth (6). When the work has proceeded 

 to this length, the other implements come unto use. If the sub- 

 stratum of the ditch be a tenacious or ductile clay, without any 

 admixture of small stones, the spade should be used for remov- 

 ing it, as no picking is generally necessary in such circumstances ; 

 especially if there be any water in the ditch : but if it consists of 

 hard clay, ramified with small veins of sand, and intermixed with 

 numberless small stones, — which composition forms a very common 

 subsoil, — picking is absolutely necessary, and in such matter the spade alone cannot be made to work 

 with effect Let, then, one of the men with the foot-pick loosen the substratum, as deep as he can 

 reach for the tramp, going backwards, and leaving the loosened material before him. Let another 

 take his spade, and dig up what has been loosened, and throw it upon the top of the mould above 

 the thorns, taking care to place the soil so thrown up continuous with the face of the bank, and hav- 

 ing at the same time regard to its inclination backwards. Throw some also to the back part of the 

 bank, so as to cover the whole black mould, and endeavour to make the shape of the bank quite 

 uniform all along, the right management of which devolves upon this labourer, and upon which much 

 of the beauty of the work depends. He must go backwards upon the loosened soil, and pare down 

 the side of the ditch next his right hand, which in this case will be the opposite one from the hedge. 

 If there is more earth at one place of the ditch than another, which will happen where there are 

 inequalities in the ground, the surplus soil should rather be thrown to the back of the bank, than the 

 top of the latter be made higher at one place than another; or it could be wheeled away to a spot on 

 which a deficiency of the soil is apprehended. Let the hedger follow with the ditcher's shovel, and 

 throw up all the mould soil which has been left by the men before him, going forward upon his work, 

 face to face with the other man, and leaving the ditch behind him completely finished He will take 

 care to throw the soil rather full on the face of the bank, even though some of it should trickle down 

 again into the ditch ; rejecting all the larger stones that may come in his way, and beating with the 

 back of the shovel the whole face of the bank, and smoothing it downwards from its top, to as far as 

 the black mould is seen down the side of the ditch, giving the whole of it a uniform inclination up- 

 wards and backwards, as if the side of the ditch were produced. If going over the ditch once in this 

 manner finishes the work, the soil will have been in a friable and easily worked state, but in hard sub- 

 strata this cannot be the case. The hand-pick is almost always required to raise four or five inches 

 more of the bottom of the ditch, in the accomplishment of which, the same process as to the arrange- 

 ment of the men, and the kind of work to each, will have to be gone through as described above, in 

 this case, when the picking is proceeding, the hedger must again tread down the top of the bank, before 

 throwing up more soil. This description proves the necessity of projecting the thorn-plants but a very 

 short way out of the bank, as the necessary beating process on its face would otherwise wound them. The 

 beating is absolutely necessary, too, in order to produce a skin, as it were, on the face of the hank, which 

 will prevent the frost from abrading and trickling down all the fine mould-soil with which its whole face 

 is covered, down to the firm earth of the substratum in the ditch. This covering of clay, and the poorer 

 it is the better for the purpose, is, fortunately, extremely inimical to the vegetation of small seeds, which 

 would otherwise take root upon the mould, grow up, and either create great trouble to eradicate them, or 

 injure the vegetation of the young hedge. Instead of permitting the plants to project too far out, 1 would 

 prefer their being nearly buried in the bank, so that the young sprouts had to be relieved in the manner 

 afterwards described, but, in most cases, the force of vegetation itself would easily accomplish this. The 

 state of the work will appear thus in the annexed figure ;466.). While the two men are preparing the rut and 



cord, &c. to begin another sketch 

 of it, let the hedger take theshovel, 

 and push back from the top of the 

 bank three or four inches of its 

 crest, or more or less if necessary, 

 in order to make the intended top 

 parallel along with the line of 

 thorns, and let him beat the top 

 gently in a rounded form, as in figure 467. ; which last touch finishes 

 the whole process of planting thorns. 



3004. Dimensions of the ditch. The rule observed for the depth of ditch is half its breadth, and the breadth 

 of bottom about one sixth of it ; so that when the breadth is four and one half feet, as we have supposed, 

 the depth will be two feet three inches below the surface of the original ground. The hedge-bank is always 

 broader than the ditch, and, in this case, will be five feet ; and, of course, the perpendicular height of 

 the hedge-bank, especially after the crest has been rounded and beaten down, will be something less 

 than the depth of the ditch. These are, in general, very desirable dimensions for a hedge ditch and 

 bank, when no constant run of water has to be accommodated ; but should a stream of water run along 

 the ditch, though in winter only, the ditch should be made proportionally capacious ; for, if not so made 

 at first, the force of water will soon make it so for itself, and probably endanger the thorn-bed. Should 

 the quantity of earth thrown out to accommodate the water make the hedge-bank too high, part of it 

 should be shovelled back, as it is not desirable to load the young thorns too heavily with a superincum- 

 bent load of earth, so as to exclude the action of the air from the roots. 



3005. Averting obstacles. Hitherto all our work has been quite smooth ; no obstacles have presented 

 themselves to frustrate our designs : but these will be met with sometimes, and we must, therefore, be 

 prepared to avert their injurious effects. These obstacles generally consist of large stones, unequal 

 ground, and surface-water. Landfast stones are often found in such substrata as we have been describing, 

 and when they can, they ought to be removed, and the foot-pick will be found a most efficient lever for 

 that purpose. Some stones are so large and amorphous, that it is impossible to remove them without 

 the assistance of gunpowder ; but blasting isolated masses of rock, whose structure is unknown to ignorant 

 men, is a dangerous business. If they lie across the ditch, it must be taken round them, and its sides so 

 sloped and pared as to permit water to flow round them without obstruction. If they lie under the thorn. 

 bed, and there is plenty of mould over them, they will do no harm to the thorns ; but should the mould 

 be thin over them, an additional thickness of sod must be placed, to form the thorn. bed above them, 

 though this should cause an elevation there above the general line of hedge. With regard to inequality 

 of surface, where the general dip of the ground is in one continued direction in the line of hedge, and yet 

 the undulations on its surface are so deep as that water could not run in the bottom of the ditch in the 

 general dip of the ground, but would collect in the hollows, were its bottom made parallel to these undu- 

 lations, the elevated part of these inequalities must be cut deeper, and the hollows less deep, than usual, 

 so that a common level may be obtained by the bottom of the ditch, to give egress to the water. A sort 



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466 



