MISPLACED HEDGES., WINDBREAKS, ETC. 121 



as you go ; waste no time nor money on great enter- 

 prises that you have not the culture or knowledge to 

 bring to perfection. 



If a lawn should express an idea, a hedge or a 

 windbreak should have a part, and a very articulate 

 part, in that conception. Most of our American 

 landscape planting expresses confusion. A rightly- 

 planted place has something to say to the passer-by. 

 This group, this tree, this hedge, are here because 

 they ought to be here. They are as exactly adjusted 

 in the well-planted homestead as words in a well- 

 expressed sentence. 



''Nothing in this ^orld is single, 



All things by a law divine 

 In one another's being mingle " 



Every farmer should be a student of nature, and 

 so should everyone who dares to make his home in 

 the country. He should try to comprehend the 

 wonderful material that he handles the earth, the 

 soil, the air, the trees, the insects, animal life and 

 vegetable life. To this end our rural schools should 

 point all their endeavor to enable the young to 

 understand the things they must touch and see. I 

 shall be glad if I can get you to enter into the inner 

 life of the hedge and of the hedge, plant; the rela- 

 tion it bears to other plants; its inhabitants and 

 what they want. Work with a microscope as well 

 as a spade. I was one day about to destroy a lot of 

 new insects on one of my hedges, but my boy, better 

 educated, checked me with the exclamation, "Hold 

 on, father ! that is a friend of ours ; it is a parasite, 

 a new one, that has just appeared to destroy the hop 

 louse." You will be a very clean man in all senses 



