OLD CORNISH HEDGES 41 



hedgehog and minute long-nosed shrew ; black and 

 white magpie and chacking, tail-shaking butcher-bird ; 

 adder and snake and slow-worm ; blood-sucking stoat 

 and weasel with flat heads and serpentine bodies, and 

 their small quarry, rats and voles and pretty sharp- 

 nosed wood-mice with leaf-like ear, and winter sleep- 

 ing dormice. 



It was fortunate that in the long ago, when our 

 progenitors began to take plots of ground for culti- 

 vation and pasture, they found out this cheap 

 ready way of marking their boundaries and safe- 

 guarding their cattle and corn. We may say they 

 planted better than they knew : they planted once, 

 and many and many a hedge unnumbered miles and 

 leagues of hedges that are now great belts of thicket, 

 were first planted by man in the remote past. Nature 

 took over the thin row of thorn seedlings and made 

 it what it is, not only the useful thing it was intended 

 for a natural barbed-wire entanglement but a thing 

 of beauty and a joy for ever. 



In West Cornwall, where I first came to know the 

 native hedge, they cannot have these belts of thicket, 

 rich in a varied plant and animal life. It is a country 

 of moors and rugged stony hills where nothing 

 flourishes but heath and furze and bracken. The 

 farming folk have succeeded in long time in creating 

 small arable and grass fields in the midst of this 

 desolation, but they cannot grow trees on account 

 of the violent winds charged with salt moisture that 

 blow incessantly from the Atlantic. If the farmer 

 plants a few trees so that he may one day eat an 



