464 
As Isaac Tayloi’ has remarked, “ England is pre-eminently the 
land of hedges and enclosures,” and this passion for enclosures 
is due partly to the Celts, who were gradually absorbed among the 
Saxon colonists, and partly to the necessity for protection felt by 
intruding colonists settling among a hostile and alien race.” 
Although the Hawthorn as a hedge-plant in England is said to 
date from the time of the Homans, yet “ on a more extended scale, 
as the enclosing of corn-fields, meadows, &c.. Hawthorn hedges, 
according to Loudon, were not generally planted in England till 
after the introduction of the Flemish husbandry into Norfolk, 
about the end of the seventeenth century.” f And it has been 
remarked by Nall, that, “as a result of the scarcity of timber, 
nowhere are hedges suffered to stand to so great an age and growth 
as in Norfolk.” 
Thus the artificial and formal have usurped the place of the 
natural and wild. The drainage of marshy land, the embanking of 
rivers, the cultivation of the soil, and particularly the cutting down 
of woods, have modified the irhysical geography, and have led, as 
Mr. Southwell has pointed out, to the destruction of animal life, 
and the extinction of many of the larger mammalia.:}; The Great 
Bustard, which, in the “good old times,” found a congenial home 
in West Norfolk, has for nearly fifty years become extinct. 
The greater part of our county is now under cultivation, or in 
permanent pasture; for, as Mr. Jefferies says, “the wicked turnip 
is responsible for the destruction of old England; far more than the 
steam-engine.” § Its scenery is entirely changed ; and yet we may 
find comfort in this state of things, for, as Euskin has observed: || 
“ The essence of picturesque character has been already defined to 
bo a sublimity not inherent in the nature of the thing, but caused 
* I. Taylor, ‘ Words and Places’ [,5], p. 78. 
t P. J. Selby, ‘ History of British Forest Trees,’ p. 71. 
+ Trans. Norfolk and Norwich Nat. Soc. vol. iii. pp. 181, lb2. 
§ ‘ Round about a great Estate,’ p. 5. The turnip is said to have been 
introduced early in tlie seventeenth century, by a member of the Townsliend 
family. 
II ‘Modern Painters,’ vol. iv. (1856). 
