74 



Fences and Hedges. 



[may, 



many years sometimes get, in spite of attention, so unshapely 

 and unnecessarily large, that ribbing-in, or cutting back the 

 lateral growth to the main stem is desirable to bring them back 

 to their former shape, and also cutting back to the base all 

 suppressed or weakly stems to encourage growth. Adjoining 

 pastures this operation is rather risky unless the fence is pro- 

 tected for a time. The hedge in the foreground on the right in 

 Fig. 2 shows the benefit of ribbing-in an unshapely fence which 

 had been annually trimmed. 



Restoration of Old Thorn Hedges. — Some of the important 

 qualities which recommend the whitethorn as a hedge plant 

 are, that it is long lived, stands cutting even to an old age^ 

 and is therefore easily kept within bounds. The cutting and 

 layering of old thorn hedges is a work that must be carefully 

 done, and they must be protected from stock until the new 

 growth is strong enough to resist cattle, and until those portions 

 of the fence which it is necessary to layer are firmly fixed 

 in their new position. The cutting of old fences which are 

 fairly well supplied with stems all along the line is compara- 

 tively easy work, and is successful when it is well done. But 

 when fences with gaps have to be dealt with, greater skill is 

 needed to fill in the gaps with living thorn. A good plan in 

 restoring old hedges is to cut the layers near the ground to 

 encourage growth at the base, and to allow the fence to grow 

 unmolested for six or eight years, then cut and lay again. 



The cutting back of old hedges to the level of the ground 

 rarely meets with success where rabbits abound. A fence 

 which had been cut over ten or twelve years ago, had only 

 two living thorns in a distance of 120 yards, the growth of 

 the rest of the stumps having been completely destroyed by 

 rabbits. 



A comparatively young fence, which has been neglected for 

 eight or ten years, is shown in Fig. 3. Cutting and layering is a 

 system of restoring hedges which is not approved of by 

 everyone, but the cause of this disapproval is found in the 

 fact that much of this kind of work is so badly done. There 

 is a tendency where there is an abundance of thorns to layer 

 too much, instead of cutting off at the base all the thorns that 

 can possibly be dispensed with, after deciding which of the 



