PART VIII. PICTURESQUE PLANTING. 541 



Useful fences are chiefly of three kinds; walls, hedges, 

 and ditches. 



With respect to hedges, hawthorn, either raised from haws, 

 or the root*, (which last method succeeds perfectly either with 

 thorns or crab) is preferable, particularly if the soil be good. 

 Crab tree approaches nearest to it, and will grow in a drier 

 soil. Beech, hornbeam, berberry, &c. may be adopted where 

 the soil is too dry or thin for the hawthorn ; elder, birch, pop- 

 lar, alder, &c. where it is too moist for any of the above. Be- 

 fore a hedge is planted, the ground should be well cleaned and 

 pulverized. A strip six or eight feet broad may be fallowed 

 and trench-ploughed the preceding summer. When the soil is 

 naturally good and deep, the thorns may be planted along the 

 centre of the strip ; or, if it be thin and too moist, it may be 

 planted on double earth, which is accomplished by forming a 

 ditch of depth and width according to the water it is to con- 

 tain, or the nature of the cattle from whom the hedge is to be 

 defended. Every hedge should be well cleaned and defended 

 for five or six years after it is planted ; and in the mean time, 

 its sides should be trained in a tapering form with the hedge- 

 knife. The great art of preserving hedges fencible, after they 

 are raised, consists in keeping them three or four times broader 



* This may be practised with several other trees, as the crab, sloethorn, ber- 

 berry, cherry, &c. 



