212' Shelters. 



we have our strongest prevalent winds. From pole to pole I am 

 putting stretches of rabbit wire netting, and such a structure * - 

 will sift the wind (to use a Kentish expression), or divide it, and 

 so break its force to a considerable extent, and for a considerable 

 distance. I shall probably connect the poles with rope or wire, 

 besides staying each pole on either side. Should rabbit mesh 

 prove so small as to get snowed up, a larger mesh might be used. 

 When the plantation has grown up sufficiently to afford the 

 desired shelter the win^reak might be removed, and used for 

 another plantation. I may mention that on this property we 

 have a narrow strip of plantation running up the slopes of the 

 hill to between 800 and 900 feet above sea level. It is very 

 narrow towards the upper end — about 40 yatrds wide — and, seen 

 at a distance, resembles bare poles against the sky Une, with a 

 faint streak of green at the head of them. Yet these poles, so 

 the shepherd reports, distinctly diminish the violence of the 

 wind. At Clifton-on-Bowmont, at an elevation of about 600 feet, 

 I have been surprised to find the sheltering effect of firs, and other 

 trees, in a plantation about 30 yards wide, and which is merely 

 a collection of tall poles with some branches at the top of 

 each tree. 



With the aid of the new grass and deep -rooting plant mixtures 

 I have suggested, stock can be. kept in the fields much later than 

 they can be at present, and as the old forms of shelter (ditches 

 ftnd banks, with trees on the top, and hedges, all affording much 

 shelter) have to a large extent been removed, or allowed to 

 decline, fresh forms of shelter are most urgently required. So 

 strongly, indeed, is the desire for shelter that on this property, a 

 great many years ago, a tenant agreed to pay, and did pay, my 

 predecessor the interest on the cost of making four blocks of planta- 

 tion for the centres of as many exposed fields. Plantations, too, 

 are the more urgently needed for protecting the game, and 

 especially the nests, which were formerly well protected by the 



* After a three years' trial I find that we have had most satisfactory results 

 from this shelter. It alters the character of the wind entirely, and does 

 away with those fierce, rotary, gusts, which whirl plants round. The 

 value is proved by the growth of the plantation, which is most satisfactory, 

 and its site is on one of those windy passages in the hills which are swept 

 by the severest blasts. 



