VII. 

 ' EARTH '-STOPPING. 



AMONGST the various changes upon the aspect of a 

 Farm necessitated by modern practice, there is none 

 which causes a greater degree of consternation in 

 the immediate vicinity than the removal of the 

 Hedgerows. There is a kind of time-honoured 

 recognition and respect accorded to these huge 

 ' mounds ' four or five feet high, and broad in pro- 

 portion, with the running accompaniment of jungle 

 sprawling at its pleasure in the plough-land along- 

 side, which it goes to the very heart of the labourers 

 themselves to desecrate, or reduce to the regulation- 

 standard. It is all very well under the glowing 

 candle-light, with the map of your farm spread out 

 before you, and its hedgerows reduced to mere lines 

 of sepia or lamp-black, to cut and carve, at your 

 will, ten or twelve large square comely-looking 

 fields out of thirty or forty unaccountably-shaped 

 rhomboids undreamt of in the hardest book of 



