, GARDEN WALL. 29 



you submit to the hen. This busy gardener will 

 be found at one time nestling in your onion bed ; 

 at another, breaking the newly set rows of your 

 dazzling ranunculuses, or scooping out the half- 

 struck layers of your prize carnations, or combing 

 with her claws the roots of a fine shrub, and leaving 

 them to crisp in the sun. With much care, but 

 scarcely without damage to the fruit buds, it is 

 possible to make the young wood unsavoury to the 

 hare, and thus to secure its safety; but it is far 

 better to look to your fence to make that secure, 

 and so ratify a truce with all your enemies at once. 

 Have no quarrel with your heritors, and you will 

 have a capital garden, wall. I have never known a 

 case in which there was not manifested by that 

 honourable body a great readiness to promote the 

 comforts of the minister, except where the latter 

 has proved either nearly useless, or given to litiga- 

 tion. The legal fence is one of stone and mortar, 

 two ells in height, measured from the surface and 

 therefore exclusive of the depth necessary to obtain 

 a foundation, and of such length as to enclose 

 half an acre of ground. Mortar perhaps once signi- 

 fied clay, but now it means lime, according to use 

 and wont. And lucky it is for your apricots, as 

 they require so much nailing, and the clay does not 

 hold. But you are not likely to suffer by the sub- 

 stitution of clay for lime, as no gentleman in these 

 times, is willing to have an an ugly hole in his pro- 

 perty, or to exibit, by a clay pit, the proof of an 

 execrable soil. A lime wall, besides, will in most 



