60 WITH THE WOODLANDERS. 



smaller ones, and the thing is done, though it does 

 not always prove a financial success. 



Many of the old hedges that have passed away 

 are not forgotten, for men whose ages run from fifty- 

 five years up to seventy have the history of these by 

 heart. When they were boys, those old hedgerows 

 were their hunting-ground ; and besides this, their 

 fathers had given them records of the same. Two 

 generations of hedge-lore the men had gathered and 

 treasured up. 



The more modern hedges are composed of quicker 

 growths, very different from the old ones ; for black- 

 thorn, crab, whitethorn, bullace, laced and interlaced 

 with great trailing brambles, formed there thick 

 shelters. Trees, too, at various distances stood 

 like great buttresses in the middle of them oaks, 

 ashes, and elms. The ground the hedges covered 

 would be viewed with astonishment now, for some 

 of them were double ones, with a deep water-run 

 between, in order to carry the water, in wet seasons, 

 from the upland fields down to the grazing meadows 

 below. 



At all seasons of the year have I hunted in the 

 old hedges. And what can escape the sharp eyes of 



