140 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



decay. No English hedgerow holds such a record of 

 successive generations, from the first clearing of the 

 fields and the erection of the boundary wall. 



And what a good time the dog has in our native 

 hedges! As we go out across the fields of a summer 

 afternoon, he bounds along beside us, picking up a 

 woodchuck scent or startled into sheepish stillness by 

 the sudden uprush of a meadow lark, but keeping pretty 

 close until we reach the long hedgerow which sepa- 

 rates a twenty-acre slope of mowing from a fifteen-acre 

 abandoned pasture, and which inarches between them 

 up the steep hill to the woods where a sentinel chestnut 

 marks the trail to the mountain-top. This hedgerow is 

 chiefly of maple, though there are aspens in it, and 

 chestnut, and cherry and alder. It is feathery as 

 a Corot in the level light of afternoon, and it twinkles 

 in the clear June breeze. It is ten or fifteen feet thick 

 at the base, almost completely concealing the original 

 stone wall and the later rail fence, while the heave of 

 the tree roots and the accumulation of compost has 

 raised the ground level beneath it so that if it were sud- 

 denly cut down the two fields would be separated by a 

 considerable mound. When we reach this hedgerow, 

 where the Peabodies are always fluting in early summer, 

 the dog abandons us. The hedge holds secrets for 

 him which we can only guess. We see his hind quarters 

 and his tail disappear into the tangle, and hear within 

 the crash of bushes, the grunts and pawings of a canine 



