By John Spencer, Esq. 



323 



most counties, having regard to their antiquity and variety. 



A spectator taking his stand on one of the many elevated points 

 on the western escarpment of .the chalk downs overlooking this 

 valley, will be struck with its richly wooded character, and if it is 

 examined in detail it will be found that a considerable part of the 

 trees which furnish this landscape are hedge-row trees. Our fore- 

 fathers did not care to cut their hedges so frequently as modern 

 agreements now consider necessary, and in the interval of time 

 which elapsed between one cutting and the next, the hedges had 

 given protection to a host of saplings of the oak, ash, beech, and 

 elm, the seeds of which had been taken there by birds, or deposited 

 by the smaller animals for future wants, or, as would be the case 

 with the elm, had sprung direct from the root of some neighbour- 

 ing tree. These seedlings had flourished so well under the foster- 

 ing care of the hedge, that when the time came round for cutting 

 it the young trees were, in many instances, too valuable for cutting 

 down, and were reserved for future timber, and thus in a great 

 measure, through the conservative agency of the hedge, our land- 

 scape has been enriched with timber beyond comparison with any 

 other pastoral country. 



Who, with the feelings of a naturalist, has not sauntered by the 

 side of one of these old mixed hedge rows, which are by no means 

 unfrequent in "Wiltshire, without a keen appreciation of the 

 interest they unfold ? let the time be; say — when the " May " is in 

 bloom, and the flowers of the dog-rose are displaying every shade 

 of the most exquisite pink, and the air perfumed with the rival 

 scents of the hawthorn and wild honeysuckle : or later in the season 

 when they are decked with the " haws " of the hawthorn and wild 

 rose, and the deep purple sloe ; while the wild crab, maple, and dog- 

 wood are vieing with each other in the rich colouring of their dying 

 leaves. Or again, viewing them with the eye of the archaeologist, 

 who will not find a pleasure in tracing back their history ; in some 

 instances, it may be, to the very infancy of our own civilization, 

 and as marking that era in our political life when the possession of 

 land had attached to it a right, the privileges of which have never 

 yet been disputed ? Or who contemplating the quiet history of these 



VOL. XII.— NO. XXXVI. 2 A 



