HOW TO GROW GOOD FENCES. 223 



repellant armour in its spinous, evergreen leaves, 

 on which account it is esteemed as a plant for 

 fences : — 



A hedge of holly, thieves that would invade, 

 Repulses like a growing palisade ; 

 Whose numerous leaves such orient greens invest, 

 As in deep winter do the spring arrest. 



This is one of our native trees, frequently attaining 

 to a great size on even wild, stony places, with only 

 a thin layer of soil. We have seen some fine 

 examples, large enough to secure the holly a place 

 among our native forest trees on the " stony Cottes- 

 wolds," as Shakespeare calls the high Gloucestershire 

 range; it is, however, of slow growth, or it would, 

 doubtless, be more used for fences: still in poor 

 soils it will, after all, grow as fast as the whitethorn. 

 Evelyn is eloquent in praise of holly. He says : — 



Is there under heaven a more glorious and refreshing object of the 

 kind than an impregnable hedge of about four hundred feet in 

 length, nine feet high, and five in diameter, which I can show in my 

 now ruined gardens at Saye Court (thanks to the Czar of Muscovy*), 

 at any .time of the year, glittering with its armed and varnished 

 leaves 1 The taller standards, at orderly distances, blushing with 

 their natural coral ; it mocks the rudest assaults of the weather, 

 beasts, or hedge-breakers, — 



Et ilium nemo impune lacessit. 

 It is with us of two eminent kinds, the prickly and smoother leaved ; 

 or, as some term it, the free holly, not unwelcome, when tender, to 

 sheep and other cattle. There is also of the white berried, and a 



* The Czar Peter the Great resided at Mr. Evelyn's house, in 

 order that he might be near the yard at Deptford, during his stay in 

 England ; but we do not see why he should be thanked for the holly 

 hedge. 



