HEDGEROW TREES AND HEDGES 239 
destroys it and makes blanks. The lime, too, 
has the disadvantages of a spreading habit and 
a thick shade. Ash does comparatively little 
damage by overshadowing, but then it is as 
greedy and objectionable as the elm. Old writers 
on rural economy recommended this as the best 
means of growing oak for the navy, and it cer- 
tainly was one of the best ways of growing 
crooked timber; but the conditions as to timber 
supplies and growing of corn are vastly different 
now from what they were then, and the spreading 
habit of oak renders it now unsuitable for growth 
in the hedgerows. Yet it still is, next to elm, 
the standard most often seen in country lanes 
and at the edge of the fields. None of the 
‘aquatic trees’ are naturally suited for occupy- 
ing such a position, and Heaven defend England 
from rigid rows of tall Lombardy poplars, which, 
like Noah’s Ark trees, line the roadways of rural 
France and Germany. Most of our. broad-leaved 
trees, and all of the best of them, are objec- 
tionable except on the score of beauty, from 
which point of view oak, elm, and ash, the 
somewhat thinly-foliaged trees, reign supreme; 
for those of denser foliage soon acquire a formal, 
