On Fences. 
195 
population view such matters through pressing necessity, and 
desire the bread-giving plants instead. It is the duty, then, as 
well as the interest of all landed proprietors, and tenants of farms, 
to eradicate the old wide fences, and to substitute in their room 
such as will occupy only a fourth part, or, in some cases, a sixth 
part of tlie space;' and in order if possible to carry conviction into 
the minds of all as to the injury our present fences entail upon us, 
1 shall proceed to enumerate in what respects they are hurtful to 
the agriculturist. 
Chap. I. — Evils of the present System of Hedge-fencing. 
I commence by stating that they are an evil ; and in establish- 
ing this important point, I do not think I can be charged with 
unfairness if I look for the proof of this assertion chiefly in a dis- 
trict famed for its husbandrj' — a corn and cattle district ; for it is 
with reference to arable and pasture lands that the subject of 
fences is at present to be treated. I take Norfolk, therefore, the 
county in which hedges were first regularly introduced for the pur- 
pose of enclosing ploughed fields: for the sake of the curious, I 
may mention that the period of this introduction may with cer- 
tainty be considered as coeval with that of Flemish husbandry, and 
reckoned from the latter end of the seventeenth century. Judging 
from appearances, one might suppose that our hedges retain to 
this day the whole of their original character — imeven, straggling, 
broad, yet incomplete in some parts, chiefly formed of whitethorn, 
but the outline in a great measure made up with briars, brambles, 
acers, elm suckers, docks, and nettles. It is undeniable that such 
is the type of the great proportion of all the fences in England. 
They are so in Middlesex, Kent, Essex, Sussex, Devon, Stafford, 
Warwick, Cambridge, and Lincoln, for in those counties they have 
fallen under my own personal observation. 
1 . They are injurious, because they harbour and are a protection 
to all sorts of weeds. — However carefully the field within them 
may be kept, there are in those fences at all times a plentiful 
supply of the germs of thistles, nettles, docks, dandelions, &c., 
ready to be distributed by every wind that blows ; so that it is abso- 
lutely impossible, so long as those weed-magazines are kept up, 
to reckon upon a time when the land in the neighbourhood shall 
be completely cleared of them. For example: — Within a quarter 
of a mile of the populous and wealthy city of Norwich, by the 
side of the Ipswich road, is a fence occupying a site ten feet in 
width. In some parts, there is a strip in front composed entirely 
of nettles, two feet in breadt h ; the body of the hedge itself occu- 
pying about six feet, and the remaining two feet bearing a miscei- 
o 2 
