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practice; for by fuch means the fap or nou- 

 rifliment is all conveyed into the plafhes, the 

 ihoots are robbed of their food, and become 

 trifling and weak at the bottom, and the hedge 

 is reduced in the part where flrength is moft 

 required. In fad, in plafliing he will do his 

 work in the beft manner who avoids either ex- 

 treme of high or low, for both are pernicious. 

 When the layers are interwoven with the 

 living ftakes, and the hedge drefied by cutting 

 ofFfuperfluous twigs, it will be proper to give 

 the layer a nick or cut with the hedge-bill at 

 every foot diftance; for by this means the fap 

 will be prevented from rifing too rapidly, and 

 the layer will pufh out a far greater number of 

 branches betwixt each nick. 



By attending carefully to the raifing and 

 keeping in order live hedges, you will remove 

 one great temptation which the idle poor have 

 in dead fences, to bring up their children from 

 the earlieft infancy in the liabits of thieving, 

 and which vice, being literally fucked in with 

 their milk, generally clings clofe in a maturer 

 age. How often do we fee a ragged fam.ily 

 confifting of a v/oman, half a dozen children, 



perhaps 



