ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. 95 



of emerald wheat, without ever a weed or a crook, 

 as made the heart rejoice. The high hedge-rows 

 are indeed now being cut down throughout the best 

 cultivated districts, but only for the economy of land, 

 the surface occupied being needed. But while we 

 have country roads from five to six rods wide, the 

 same objection does not obtain with us. Observe 

 again, I beg, that I do not counsel the planting of any 

 such road-side tangles, or indeed the sparing of them, 

 when any better use can be made of the land. I only 

 plead for their continued presence in place of a rude 

 hurly-burly of stubs and harsh boulders, to which 

 condition many farmers reduce them, and call it a 

 judicious " slicking up." 



I have run widely away from the little homestead 

 of my friend Lackland ; so widely indeed, that I shall 

 not soon encounter him again. Whenever that may 

 be, I trust I may hear that his pelargoniums are all 

 a-bloom that his pig and his cow are thriving hie 

 road-side in order, his Patrick a jewel of a man, and 

 that all rural felicities attend him. 



NOTE. I have used the term ' ' Alderney " cattle, as ap- 

 plying in the old sense to all cattle of Channel Island descent: 

 though, as a matter of fact, we rarely encounter any true 

 "Alderneys." The talk nowadays is of Jerseys and Guern- 

 seys. 



