RAMBLES ABOUT NEWMARKET 211 



abouts to much advantage, thanks to local fashion 

 in making parterres on the border line of house 

 fronts and side- walks or bare roads. The kiddies 

 must be educated from their childhood into 

 respecting this sort of property, for no one seems 

 to touch the gay little beds whose boundaries 

 consist merely of a line of stones arranged very 

 much like the '' claims " set out on the sands by 

 the sea. Great damage might be done to these 

 pleasure-gardens by a wandering horse, cow, or 

 pig. Are those animals also brought up in the 

 ways they should go, and " learned " not to 

 depart from them ? And if this be so, what 

 about travelling flocks and herds ? 



The Herringswell district is to me most 

 remarkable for the variety of hedges tried on it 

 at one time and another in endeavour to keep the 

 wind from ranging raging free over the land. 

 Allowing for these, the belts, and more spacious 

 plantations, you can easily grasp an idea of what 

 Newmarket Heath used to be like when doubt- 

 less all the part on the Bury side marched with 

 the country I speak of, one great waste, practi- 

 cally treeless. Thousands have been spent on 

 remedying nature's shortcomings in failing to 

 decorate the great plain. Three miles and a bit 

 from Newmarket on the Norwich road commences 

 an avenue (mainly of elms) a mile and a half long, 

 a good companion to the long row of beeches 

 bordering the Duchess's drive going to Cheveley. 

 Between Kennett and Herringswell is an avenue 

 of sycamores that runs a long way, and has not 

 much longer to run without running down, I fear, 

 for they seem to have got pretty nearly all there 

 is to be had out of the poor soil and are quite 

 past their meridian. 



