200 
Oil Fences. 
The inference to be drawn from this table is, that if these four 
separate districts give a fair average of the county, then in every 
hundred acres of land throughout Norfolk, ten acres are occupied 
with hedges and hedgerow trees. Again, reckoning this county to 
contain, independent of gentlemen's seats, 1400 square miles of 
arable and pasture lands, an estimate which is considerably under 
that of Mr. Arthur Young, who wrote in 1801, it would follow that 
upwards of 94,000 acres of the best of its soil are occupied with 
fences and hedgerow trees. Applying these figures to the forty 
divisions of England, which are in general more thickly intersected 
with fences, &c., than Norfolk, the result would be an area equal 
to two of the largest counties in Britain. There are those, how- 
ever, who wish to uphold the characteristic feature of England — 
its hedgerow trees — and I may state that apart from them altoge- 
ther, the land occupied by the fences throughout Norfolk is about 
43,000 acres, which, after deducting one-fourth for the necessary 
space required for hedges, would leave 32,000 acres disposable for 
corn and pasture lands. This amount multiplied by forty would 
indicate the extent that might be saved by reconstructing the 
fences alone throughout England, at 1,280,000 acres of good 
land. Norfolk, however, is one of the largest of the counties of 
England ; slill it is also true that it ranks amongst those which are 
distinguished for large and open inclosures, so that an equal por- 
tion of land might be saved in a county of little more than ihe half 
in extent. But, as already hinted, the evil of trees in hedgerows 
is not merely confined to the space occupied by them : it extends 
to the great stagnation of air created, which of course is much 
greater than where a fence only runs between the fields. On this 
subject the opinion of Mr. Marshall in his ' Minutes on Agri- 
culture in Southern Counties,' is so much in point that I beg leave 
to transcribe it. " The corn," he says, " of narrow close fields, 
and everywhere under high trees, is, by the many heavy rains, veiy 
much lodged ; and in some places, grown through, by weeds : 
while in large open fields, or where the hedges are low, very little 
damage is done. But, at present, I feel their inconveniency still 
more sensibly. We carried the middle of H. I (whgat) the' day 
before yesterday (August 15) in good order; but about a load 
under a high quick hedge was still damp, and was obliged to be 
left in the field yesterday ; some of the sheaves were opened to give 
them air ; — a heavy squall came on before they could be reset up, 
and they are now growing into mats as they lie on the ground. 
Had it not been for the high hedge it would have been all safe in 
the bam. I would not wish to see the fence of an arable field 
above four feet high. Perhaps a good ditch, with a pruned quick 
hedge about that height, is preferable to any other fence. The 
oats of A, under a high thick hedge, are mere dung j under one 
