2 5 2 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 



should be removed. Everything likely to inter- 

 fere with the growth and compactness of the 

 hedge, down to the very ground, should be cut 

 away in the endeavour to keep the fence as 

 clean and effective as possible. Of course, taking 

 things as one actually finds them, this high 

 standard can never be reached in practice, though 

 it should be aimed at so far as is feasible. A 

 special order should, however, be given to the 

 hedger about the cutting out of the most noxious 

 class of weeds, such as barberry. This not only 

 finds its way into hedges, but is even regularly 

 used for hedging in some parts, as, for instance, 

 in some of the Perthshire valleys. Yet it is a 

 standing danger to wheat crops by reason of 

 being the host upon whose leaves the smut or 

 wheat-rust of Puccinia graminis has its change of 

 generation before it can again reproduce itself to 

 scourge the farmer. All around Pitlochry one 

 can see hedges having a free growth of fungus- 

 infected barberry and strengthened with slabs of 

 cankered larch, that might well form an object- 

 lesson both to the farmer and to the forester. 



Thin hedges may best be thickened, and gaps be 

 filled, by planting. This can preferably be done 



