574 ON USEFUL AND BOOK 1. 



a country wholly level, as many counties in England are, may 

 sometimes be partially planted without doing much injury to 

 the farmer; while, if properly managed, it will vary the coun- 

 try, and improve its climate. In such levels, the hedges should 

 be kept very low, and the trees trained erect, with single stems 

 and few lateral arms near the surface; or, as is done in some 

 places, the width of an ordinary ridge on each side of the 

 hedge may be kept in perpetual pasture, which prevents the 

 corn from being so much injured by the trees, and is a great 

 ornament to a farm. But if the whole farm be kept in perpe- 

 tual pasture, the trees may often be allowed to extend their 

 branches, and the hedges may be kept high or low, at pleasure. 

 Moist or argillaceous soils, under perpetual aration, should 

 never be planted with hedgerow trees : and, indeed, before they 

 are planted any where, a due estimate should be made of their 

 effect on the annual rent of the land — on their intrinsic value — - 

 on the climate — and on the appearance of the country. 



The species of trees which are most proper for hedgerows are,, 

 in good deep soil,' the oak and Scotch elm ; in stony soil, the: 

 ash; in poorer soil, the beech, sycamore, and birch; in the 

 case of a moist soil, as meadow, &c, the Lombardy poplar* 

 which, besides its timber produce, forms, when. in. rows,, a close,, 

 erect, narrow hedge, fifty or sixty feet high, in a few years. The 

 oak and the Scotch elm prosper better in hedgerows than in; 

 any other situation; their roots have a free range in the adjoin- 



