DIFFERENT SURFACES. 143 



It is quite plain that this action of the spring gales 

 must be the greatest where the country is in the highest 

 cultivation, because the soil there is better, and because 

 the naked surface that the fields present, is much more 

 affected by the changes of temperature. In summer, 

 the meadow or the grass field feels cool, while the 

 ploughed, but naked one, has a heat that is almost 

 insupportable ; and in winter, though the whole effect 

 be not so great, the difference between the two kinds 

 of surface is as great in proportion. Hence the great 

 advantage of having fields alternately with grassy and 

 naked surfaces ; and hence, too, the value of hedges 

 and trees. When the farmer lays down a field in grass, 

 he often talks about " resting" it ; but it is fattened as 

 well as rested, in as much as it gets a portion of new 

 mould from all the fields around it. The ground occu- 

 pied by the hedges, the coppice, and the wood, too, is 

 not lost ; and unless a district be very small, and shel- 

 tered in a very peculiar manner, the removal of these 

 things is one more step towards making it bleak and 

 barren. No doubt there is a limit, beyond which, if 

 these be accumulated, the agricultural value will be di- 

 minished ; and that limit must vary with the elemental 

 action to which the district is exposed ; but there are 

 few districts in Britain in which there is much danger 

 that that limit shall be approached ; and when we find 

 nature herself fencing in certain portions and kinds of 

 surface ; drawing, as it were, a cordon sanitaire, around 

 the mountain, the moor, or the marsh, we may safely 

 follow her with our imitations. We find that she is 

 universal in this : if the soil of the wild be not capable 

 of supporting a rough crop, such as tall heath, or 



