122 MY FARM. 



munerative crops. If otherwise, let the wild growth 

 enjoy its wantonness. It may come to be a little 

 scattered range of wood in time, and so have its 

 value ; it may offer shelter against the sweep of 

 winds ; it will give a nursing place for the birds, and 

 the birds are the farmer's friends. 



I am loth to believe that the natural graces of 

 woodland and shrubbery are incompatible with agri- 

 cultural interests ; and a true farm economy seems to 

 me better directed in making more thorough the 

 tillage of the open lands, than in making Quixotic 

 foray upon the bushy fastnesses of outlying pastures. 



When a dense population shall have rendered ne- 

 cessary the employment of every foot of our area for 

 food-growing purposes, it may be incumbent on us to 

 cleave all the rocks, and to clear away all the copses : 

 but until then, I shall love to treat with a tender con- 

 sideration the green mantle albeit of brambles and 

 wild vines with which Nature covers her rough- 

 nesses ; and I seem to see in the streaming tendrils, 

 and in the nodding tassels of bloom which bind and 

 tuft these wild thickets of the hills, a sampler of 

 vegetable luxuriance, which every summer's day 

 provokes and defies all our rivalry of the fields. 



What is called tidiness, is by no means always 

 taste ; and I am slow to believe that farm economy 

 must be at eternal war with grace. I know well that 



