THE MANSE GARDEN. 25 



exemption of the fruit-bearing wood. It is near 

 the extremities that the crop is most abundant, and 

 these also are the portions that the hare makes 

 choice of to eat entirely, whilst the wood, otherwise 

 garbled, contracts a disposition to canker. The 

 lowest branch, lying most convenient to the teeth, 

 suffers the furthest process of gnawing ; the next a 

 degree less; and the third, not so accessible, is 

 truncated only as far as the bite is easy ; so that the 

 tree is mere vacuity where the fruit clusters should 

 abound; and the branches, instead of maintaining 

 their destined parallelism, are reduced in figure to 

 the transverse section of a Dutch ship. I might 

 tell of a remedy for this wasteful sight, but rather 

 withhold it, lest, in mastering the hare, you submit 

 to the hen. This busy gardener will be found at 

 one time nestling in your onion beds ; at another, 

 breaking the newly set rows of your dazzling ranun- 

 culuses, or scooping out the half struck layers of your 

 prize carnations, or combing with her claws the roots 

 of a fine shrub, and leaving them to crisp in the sun. 

 With much care, but scarcely without damage to the 

 fruit buds, it is possible to make the young wood 

 unsavoury to the hare, and thus to secure its safety ; 

 but it is far better to look to your fence to make 

 that secure, and so ratify a truce with all your ene- 

 mies at once. 



Have no quarrel with your heritors, and you will 

 have a capital garden wall. I have never known a 

 case in which there was not manifested by that hon- 

 ourable body a great readiness to promote the com- 

 forts of the minister, except where the latter has 

 proved either nearly useless, or given to litigation. 

 B 



