Practical Considerations 145 



that it is, of course, more difficult for man or animals to get 

 over a fence that slopes towards them. An ordinary wire 

 or hurdle fence is, in fig. 42, put in the bottom of the exca- 

 vation, this latter being just deep enough to make the fence 



Common Wire Fence Sunken. 



invisible from the lawn of the pleasure grounds. The inner 

 slopes in the two last plans might be used for a collection of 

 the dwarfer kinds of shrubs in irregular patches, or for spring 

 flowers, when the aspect is sufficiently sunny. 



For outside boundary fences something that is rather 

 secure will be principally wanted. Iron railings on the top 

 of low walls are most ornamental, and give a friendly, hos- 

 pitable, and open character to a place. Walls or close wooden 

 palings may be useful near towns or in bad neighborhoods, 

 but they should not ordinarily be more than five feet or five 

 feet six inches high. Wooden fences are decidedly the n.ost 

 troublesome and expensive in the end. Stone walls will have 

 a much less ugly appearance if furnished with a neat stone 

 coping. Both these and close wooden fences may be mounded 

 against on the inside, to the depth of two or more feet, which, 

 if the bank be made the full breadth of the border, and softly 

 worked into the common level of the garden, or to the edge 

 of a walk, will greatly take off the height of the fence from 

 the inside, and make it much more easy to hide it with low 

 shrubs or masses of wild-looking ivy. Fig. 43 represents a 

 fence of this description in which there is a low wall about 

 two feet six inches high towards the road and a hedge planted 

 immediately within the wall on a sloping bank. The hedge, 

 when fully grown, would overhang the wall and be cut flush 



