GENERAL REMARKS. 435 



pecuniary position for the moment. If the first mow- 

 ing of the season is made tinder the receipt of an in- 

 creased or unexpected dividend, the lawn gets a swarth 

 or two more, and a cock or two of hay is subtracted 

 from the harvest ; while the next year, under a smaller 

 income, thrift conquers taste, and the lawn, instead of 

 being shorn of its grass, is shorn of its fair proportions. 



In order to make some appropriate boundary or divis- 

 ion between the lawn and the park, or hay-field ; in other- 

 words, between the dressed and undressed portions of 

 the estate, great use has been made of late years of the 

 wire fence or hurdle. By its adoption we might dimin- 

 ish the amount of lawn now kept under the scythe, ob- 

 taining similar results by substituting cattle especially 

 sheep and increasing very much the charm of the 

 landscape by the introduction of animated nature. 



The keenest eye can hardly detect a wire fence at 

 thirty or forty rods distance ; consequently our finest 

 places do not really require a lawn larger than twice 

 this breadth in diameter, provided the grass on the 

 other side of the wire is kept equally short by sheep. 



It is quite astonishing in England how very small the 

 proportion of mown lawn is to that part which, by use 

 of invisible wire fencing, is kept equally short and 

 almost in as fine order, by grazing. 



At Windsor Castle we doubt if the mown border or 

 strip of grass round the park-side of the castle exceeds 

 fifty to one hundred feet up to the wire fence, beyond 

 which, in the park, are larg'e masses of rhododenrons, 

 laurels, Portugal laurels, etc., protected from thousands 

 of deer and sheep which surround them, by invisible wire 

 fences. 



At Longleat, the magnificent seat of the Marquis of 

 Bath which Charles II. on his return from his exile 

 then considered the finest place in England there is a 

 strip of three hundred feet of mown lawn planted 

 with rare shrubs, between the river and one side only 



