58 THE GAMEKEEPER AT HOME. 



the idleness and dislike of taking trouble characteristic of 

 the times. To set up a line of posts and rails requires 

 some little skill ; a man must know his business to stop 

 a gap with a single rail or pole, fixing the ends firmly 

 in among the underwood ; even to fit thorn bushes in 

 properly, so as to effectually bar the way, needs some 

 judgment : but anybody can stretch a wire along and 

 twist it round a tree. Hedge-carpentering was, in fact, a 

 distinct business, followed by one or two men in every 

 locality ; but iron now supplants everything, and the 

 hedges themselves are disappearing. 



When the hedgers and ditchers were put to work to 

 cut a hedge — the turn of every hedge comes round once 

 in so many years — they used to be instructed, if they 

 came across a sapling oak, ash, or elm, to spare it, and 

 cut away the bushes to give it full play. But now they 

 chop and slash away without remorse, and the young 

 forest-tree rising up with a promise of future beauty falls 

 before the billhook. In time the full-grown oaks and 

 elms of the hedgerow decay, or are felled ; and in con- 

 sequence of this careless destruction of the saplings there 

 is nothing to fill their place. The charm of English 

 meadows consisted in no small degree in the stately trees, 

 whose shadows lengthened with the declining sun and 

 gave such pleasant shelter from the heat. Soon, however, 

 if the rising generation of trees is thus cut down, they 

 must become bare, open, and unlovely. 



