262 



Pa'wson : English Hedge7'ows. 



How could the br3^onys climb, and where could they hang- their 

 votive chaplets ? Where would the clematis find a spot on 

 which to spread out its fleece of silver ? Many of these plants 

 are climbers : they need some nursing'-shrub on which they 

 may lean or to which they may attach themselves by tendril or 

 twining" stem, or by hooks and prickles, so that they may gTow 

 aloft and reach the open air and the full sunshine ; and to help 

 them upwards is the office of the kindly hawthorn. 



The summer g-lory of the hedg-es gives place in autumn to 

 utility. Then they become wild orchards, teeming' with all 

 manner of fruits for bird and beast, a rich harvest of haws 

 and rose-hips, of nuts and brambles, elderberries, sloes, and 

 acorns. They are veritable fruit-walls, these hedgerows, and 

 often remind one of the mulberries and poplars which serve 

 in South Europe as the nurse-trees of the vine. 



Except, perhaps, in the g-rounds and parks of g-reat houses, 

 which are not for everyone, it is only as they stand singly along 

 the hedges that we see the full beauty of our native trees, the 

 strength of the oak, the grace of the ash, the loftiness of the 

 elm. In a wood there is too great a crowd : you cannot see 

 a tree for the trees, but here you can walk round each one of 

 them ; and so can the sun, and every part of them is lighted and 

 ripened by his rays. How fine is their foliage, how free their 

 growth, how abundant their fruit ! They have in every way 

 a better time than their brothers of the woods. 



The hedges cherish England's fauna not less than her flora, 

 for they are the greatest cause of our abounding birds (and here 

 again I justly swell with patriotism, for have we not as many 

 singing birds in many an English parish as you will find in 

 a Continental province?). Birds love shelter but not deep 

 shade : indeed, gloom is not favourable to life of any kind, 

 and we are told that the dense forests of the tropics are as 

 lonely and silent as our own pine woods. A thick branching 

 hedge, with herbage and tangle at its foot, and a tall tree 

 springing from it here and there, with mossy stumps and 

 pollard ashes grown over with ferns and ivy, is just what a bird 

 desires when he is looking for a home. Here is shelter and vet 

 sunshine, shade without sadness : in fact, in whatever way he 

 likes to build his nest, in such a hedge he can find a proper 

 place. In a word, Jie is suited: so down drop the migrants 

 in myriads on our land to cheer us all the summer through 

 by the dainty sight of them and by their sweet songs. 



Naturalist, 



