Dr. H. F. C. Cleghorn on the Hedge Plants of India. 249 



Peninsula. The number is a large one, to which I could have 

 added many more, indigenous in the jungles, which have not 

 been tried. We have confined our remarks to quick hedges 

 " vivse sepes/' because they are obviously preferable to every 

 other mode of protecting agricultural produce in a climate like 

 that of India. Ditches are particularly unsuitable, rapidly filling 

 up with rank vegetation, and their sides often giving way under 

 the violence of the monsoon. Stone walls are rarely seen, being 

 expensive and always badly constructed. Wire fences, coated with 

 dammer, were introduced at Bombay by the energetic Dr. Buist 

 in 1843 ; these unquestionably form a light and elegant enclosure 

 for oriental compounds, but are too expensive to come into use 

 among native cultivators. 



The subject is truly important. Large tracts consisting of 

 many acres together, wholly or partially uncultivated, and the fre- 

 quent occurrence of seasons of scarcity, attest the still neglected 

 state of Indian agriculture, while the remains of quickset hedges, 

 decayed terraces and ruined wells in many parts convey the im- 

 pression that irrigation and husbandry in remote ages had been 

 practised more assiduously than by the present generation. 



One of the obstacles to improvement we believe to be, that 

 from the time the grain appears above ground till the harvest is 

 gathered in, the ryot has to watch his field ; but as many wild 

 hogs and other animals infest the neighbouring jungle, this 

 watching is difficult and often ineffectual, and hinders the farmer 

 from extending his operations *. We know too from the official 

 return on cotton culture in India (pp. 444, 489, 490), and from 

 the testimony of many collectors and other observersf, that great 

 devastation takes place annually from herds of antelopes and 

 thousands of heads of cattle which migrate or are driven from 

 place to place in particular seasons. The wild animals are being 

 destroyed in large numbers, and as cultivation extends will find 

 no shelter, while the damage occasioned by stray bullocks could 

 be prevented by encouraging a more general system of field en- 

 closures. 



" The frequent fearful occurrences of famine in India remind 

 us of the almost forgotten period when they were of as frequent 

 occurrence in Europe, and the inference follows, that when the 

 light of European science has extended to India the same bene- 



* Asiatic Researches (Carey), x. 34. 



t Dr. Gibson, Superintendent of the Botanical Gardens at Dapooree, 

 states with reference to an experiment (sowing of upland cotton), that it 

 was one on which a general conclusion could not be based, inasmuch as the 

 field enjoyed the shelter of a hedge on one side and tree plantations on 

 other two sides — few of those appliances are to be found in nine-tenths of 

 the villages of the Deccan. — Bora. Hort. Trans, no. 2. p. 49. 



Ann. ^ Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 2. Vol. vi. 17 . 



