24 



vines she recommends small fruited varieties of wild grapes, 

 that may be readily grown in pots from seeds and set out 

 when six months old, Virginia creeper, waxwork, the yellow 

 Chinese honeysuckle and the bush honeysuckle. She would 

 surround this hedge with a border of rich earth at least a foot 

 wide, wherein to plant wild strawberries, and every six feet 

 also a plant of the Lucretia dewberry. Then she would keep 

 hands off and let nature take her course, letting the leaves 

 lie where they fall. If strong canes of wild blackberries and 

 thorny greenbrier are used to form a fence about the hedge, 

 so much the better. Mrs. Wright also described, as follows, 

 in "Bird-Lore" how she made a successful resort for thrashers 

 in her garden, which they found, and in which they nested 

 the second year.^ 



It was late autumn, the time when, the garden being put in order, 

 there is a little breathing space for cutting old wood from the shrubberies, 

 and shortening long shoots that are sure to be weighed down and broken 

 by snow and wind. One rather shabby-looking group of shrubs had been 

 selected for a special attack, a straggling flock of the prune-leaved spirea, 

 with double white flowers like tiny roses ("Bridal- wreath" was, I think, 

 the name given it in the old garden from which mine came). This spirea, 

 by means of tap-roots, walks along, and, if the soil be good, sticks out 

 its elbows and quickly appropriates the surrounding country. Every 

 third year this particular tangle had to be thinned out and this was its 

 third year. Before ordering wholesale slaughter, I drew near, to see 

 what other plant wanderers had joined the gypsy band, and helped make 

 an almost impenetrable thicket between the flower-corner and the house 

 itself. Amid the sharp, straight shoots of spirea were raspberry canes, 

 lilac suckers, several wands of sweetbrier, young tartarian honeysuckle, 

 cornels, and black cherries — all telling that the thicket was a favorite 

 perch for birds. Around this, stretched like long arms, long vines of 

 wistaria were clasped, and when I tried to pull them away a sharp bar- 

 bsrry thorn plucked me by the sleeve. As I stopped to free myself, 

 something whispered in my ear: "Here is what you are looking for, a 

 perfect Thrashery, all ready made and waiting. All you have to do is to 

 protect this place near the ground from cats, for they will not be able to 

 force themselves through higher up." Instead of cutting and pruning, I' 

 called the man-of-all-garden-work to help me build, and some lengths of 

 fence netting with a barbed wire top and bottom were pushed between 

 the bushes close to the ground and wired together, until a space of some 

 twenty feet was enclosed. The meshes of the wire were sufficiently wide 

 to admit a large bird, but nothing more. 



1 Bird-Lore, Vol. XV, No. 6, November-December, 1913, pp. 362, 363. 



