40 THE LAND'S END 



The oldest, toughest, closest and most evenly-cut 

 hedge one knows would hardly afford a safe footing 

 for a man ; and as to attempting to get upon or walk 

 on a big unkept hedge, such as are common in the 

 south and west counties on this side the Tamar, the 

 very thought of it is painful. In imagination one 

 sees, and seeing feels, oneself stuck fast in a big 

 bramble bush. In Cornwall I discovered that a stone 

 wall was called a hedge the sort of wall which in 

 Scotland I had been taught to call a dyke. I did not 

 like it so well as the English hedge, that wild dis- 

 ordered tangle of all the most beautiful plants in 

 these islands black and white thorn ; privet with its 

 small grape-like clusters ; yew and holly and ivy with 

 late, honeyed blossoms for bees and wasps and hor- 

 nets ; and briar and sweet-briar, bramble and briony ; 

 also poisonous black briony and traveller's-joy, a 

 green and silver tapestry ; and wayfaring tree, spindle- 

 wood and cornel, with scarlet, purple and orange- 

 coloured berries ; and dark deadly-nightshade, push- 

 ing its slender stems up through the interlaced 

 branches all massed together for common protection 

 like a packed herd of wild swine on their defence in 

 some savage solitude, displaying bristling backs and 

 bared gnashing tushes to a hostile world. 



They are these wildings of the hedge the counter- 

 parts in the vegetable world of the creatures called 

 " vermin " in the animal kingdom. In the recesses 

 of their thorny intertwining boughs, and deep down 

 among their tough ancient roots, the vermin, the 

 banned ones, have their home and refuge the quaint 



