322 



On Hedges and Hedge Rows. 



author, Cresccntius (lib. v.) that hawthorn hedges were used in 

 Italy in 1400, I have met with no record that the common haw- 

 thorn was employed solely for forming hedges in England before 

 the very end of the reign of Henry VIII. In 1611 however, one 

 Standish in a book which he called the " Commons Complaint, " 

 lays down a new method of pruning the whitethorn (hawthorn) in 

 fences, shewing that it was then beginning to be appreciated as a 

 hedge plant, and in an old black letter copy of a work on planting 

 published in 1612, the author when giving directions for planting 

 a quick-set hedge, says : — " take whitethorne, crab tree and hollin 

 mixed together — or else any one of them, and by no means, if you 

 can chuse, set any blackthorne among them, for that it will grow 

 into the fields ward and spoyle pasture and tear the wool off the 

 sheepe's back." 



In " Tusser's " five hundred points of good husbandry, he writes : 



" Gro plough or delve up advised with skill ; 

 The breadth of a ridge, and in length as you will ; 

 "Where speedy quick-set for a fence will draw, 

 To sow in the seed of bramble and haw." 



Hedges however formed exclusively with the hawthorn were not 

 commonly planted until a still later period, for Evelyn in 1664 

 tells of a friend of his who made a considerable addition to his 

 income by rearing young quick-sets and selling them to his friends ; 

 and in fact the use of the hawthorn alone as a hedge plant did not 

 become general until the latter part of the reign of William and 

 Mary. 



Having thus brought down the history of hedges to a period 

 when the mode of planting them became much the same as that 

 practised at the present time, and the adoption of the hawthorn as 

 a hedge plant became almost general, it only remains for me, very 

 briefly, to notice the effect of hedge rows on English scenery in 

 general. 



The great Wiltshire vale, which, commencing at the foot of the 

 downs, stretches across the county westward to the Cotswolds — 

 broken only by intervening ridges of the middle oolite — affords as 

 good a representation of English hedge rows as we meet with in 



