252 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 
should be removed. Everything likely to inter- 
fere with the growth and compactness of the 
hedge, down to the very ground, should be cut 
away in the endeavour to keep the fence as 
clean and effective as possible. Of course, taking 
things as one actually finds them, this high 
standard can never be reached in practice, though 
it should be aimed at so far as is feasible. A 
special order should, however, be given to the 
hedger about the cutting out of the most noxious 
class of weeds, such as barberry. This not only 
finds its way into hedges, but is even regularly 
used for hedging in some parts, as, for instance, 
in some of the Perthshire valleys. Yet it is a 
standing danger to wheat crops by reason of 
being the host upon whose leaves the smut or 
wheat-rust of Puccinia graminis has its change of 
generation before it can again reproduce itself to 
scourge the farmer. All around Pitlochry one 
can see hedges having a free growth of fungus- 
infected barberry and strengthened with slabs of 
cankered larch, that might well form an object- 
lesson both to the farmer and to the forester. 
Thin hedges may best be thickened, and gaps be 
filled, by planting. This can preferably be done 
