

ONE of the gi-eat beauties of our islaud, repeatedly 

 noticed by foreigners with admiration, is its cultivated 

 and garden-like appearance. This is especially remark- 

 able in the southern parts of the kingdom, where an 

 extensive view is generally a scene of fertility and beauty, 

 a richly-wooded and well-watered tract on which the 

 eye rests with the greatest satisfaction. 



A very large proportion of this beauty is owing to 

 the practice of enclosing our fields with living and ver- 

 dant fences, and also of permitting timber trees to re- 

 main in those wild and picturesque hedges, which border 

 green lanes or village byways. For although in some 

 of our counties the stone-fence is adopted on account of 

 the abundance of that material, yet the live fence is so 

 much the more general, as to be one of the charac- 

 teristics of our native land. And long may it remain 



