On Hedges. 



pies; the only rational ones I ever saw, for making thorn 

 hedges. I have mentioned them to several persons who 

 are cultivating hedges : but they do not give themselves 

 the trouble to examine them: they let their gardeners take 

 their own course. You will find his directions, I think, in 

 his first volume. I have recited them in substance to Mr. 

 Main, and added that his other countryman. Lord Kaims, 

 had suggested a like mode of training a thorn hedge. Mr. 

 Main had not heard of either Anderson or Lord Kaims. 

 Yet he is distinguished for his intelligence. Mr. Main's 

 hedges I have repeatedly seen. If, as you mention, he pro- 

 poses in his pamphlet, to slope the sides of his hedges, ta- 

 pering them upwards, I have forgotten it. His own, how- 

 ever are not so formed. He sets the plants only six or se- 

 ven inches asunder, so that when well grown, the stems 

 alone would form a fence. I have a thousand of Main's 

 hedge thorns, which I shall set in corresponding rows 

 eventually to form the fences of the avenue from a pub- 

 lic road to my house ; and I shall train them according 

 to Anderson's directions ; of which an essential one is, 

 not to cut the top of the stem until it has acquired suf- 

 ficient stability to resist even a bull. Till then, the sides 

 only are to be pruned, or sheared^ and in slopes upwards 

 to the heighth of four and a half or five feet, to preserve 

 the side shoots down to the ground. For if, like your 

 hemlock hedge, they will retain the lower branches, 

 when the sides are pruned perpendicularly, much more 

 will they do it when the sides are sloped, and give them 

 a perfect exposure to the sun, air, rains and dews. 



From what I had occasionally read of English thorn 

 hedges, I doubted their constituting complete fences — 

 I doubted the more, because it seemed to be a common 



