WAY-SIDE HINTS. 133 



upon their acceptance. The osage orange in certain 

 portions of the West, and of the Southwest, promises 

 to be very effective. It starts late in the spring, but 

 holds its foliage until the frost withers it. In the 

 extreme North, and in the Northeast, its shoots are 

 liable to be winter-killed, and its own rampant growth 

 is also against it, as an economic plant for hedging. 

 For effective treatment it requires two or three clip- 

 pings in the year. This is more, we fancy, than the 

 holders of Western prairie farms will be willing to 

 bestow. After mature years it may possibly show a 

 more tractable disposition in this respect. The honey- 

 locust has been adopted in many quarters, and has its 

 sturdy advocates. But it is open to the same objec- 

 tion of a too luxuriant growth on congenial soils, and 

 of the still more odious objection of a disposition to 

 " sucker," or send up shoots from the roots at a long 

 remove from the parent stem. 



The barberry (Herberts vulgaris} is strongly com- 

 mended by many, but it has never yet had, so far as 

 I am aware, fair field trial. A strong objection to it 

 appears to me to lie in the fact that, like the willow, 

 it never inclines to branch from near the root. It 

 sends up indeed a great number of shoots ; but shoots 

 of this kind, growing parallel, and showing few leaf- 

 lets, or little side-spray, can never make a compact, 

 or even a graceful hedge. The old-fashioned farmers 



