Hedges and Enclosures of Devonshire. 
425 
the hedges being of the same kind, the loss is only half of what it 
is when they are 3 acres and upwards. 
The evils of the present system of dividing farms, general over 
this and great part of the neighbouring counties, may be thus 
summed up. The hedges occupy in some cases fully 10 per 
cent., but on an average of these ten parishes, 7\ per cent., or 1 
acre in 14. They shade and injure at least half as much; most 
persons, landlords as well as tenants, whose opinion I have asked, 
say quite as much more. They harbour birds and vermin which 
injure the crops ; and that this is no small evil any one may 
satisfy himself, by going into a field just before harvest. They 
are nurseries for weeds; they prevent that free circulation of air 
so necessary to the healthy growth of plants as well as animals : 
they are obstacles to the drainage of the soil, the roots found in 
them frequently choking up the drains. They are expensive to 
erect, as well as to keep in repair ; the expense of new hedges in 
labour and planting being about 3s. firf. per perch, and that of 
keeping them in order about 5 per cent, of the rental. The soil on 
each side of them is generally thinner, from the materials for 
making the banks being taken from it. So many small enclosures 
require a much greater number of gates, which have to be kept 
up and renewed : and they cause a much greater number of small 
lanes and cart-tracks leading from one place to another. The 
damage from shade is also very much greater from those hedges 
which run east and west. To do the least damage and to be of 
the greatest service as shelter, our most prevalent and severe 
winds being from the west and south-west, hedges should be made, 
and the long way of the fields be from north to south ; for the 
same reason that Loudon lays it down as a rule in building a 
house, to make the diagonal line in that direction ; namely, 
because the sun thus shines on every side of it every day. The 
fences being in most cases crooked, and the fields of every shape 
but right-angled, the labour of every operation of the farm, parti- 
cularly ploughing, is most materially increased. The parishes of 
Huxham and Poltimore will contrast favourably with the others 
in this respect. This evil is anything but a trifling one, espe- 
cially when to it is added the labour caused by the roots of trees 
which shoot out into the fields. In any parish this is felt ; but in 
such a parish as Rewe, where there is much timber, one may see, 
when the ground is laid open by the plough, that the roots of the 
trees cross each other from opposite sides of the f eld. These roots 
must abstract much of the nutritive qualities of the ground. As 
an instance of how fast the root of a tree grows, the following 
fact was mentioned to me by a gentleman of Crediton : — " A 
drain which had been made only the year before was found to be 
