THE CULTIVATOR. 
April. 
ping the better. Then cut down to the ground, cut 
often, and form the hedge in a single year, beginning 
in early spring. 
3. Shoots will generally grow from four to six feet 
long if not cut—sometimes more, when soil and culture 
are good. 
4. As to the proportion that proves successful, I 
should think it about in proportion to the orchards that 
have proved successful in the^West—and your own arti¬ 
cle or remarks in the Annual Register for 1857, page 
355, most clearly sets that forth The sad fact still is, 
that there is not more than about one man in ten that 
will raise any crop whatever; the majority will not 
have more than two-thirds or one-half a crop of any¬ 
thing, if it is possible to blunder out of it. Hence, if 
land that would easily produce 100 bushels of corn to the 
acre, is made to produce 40, it does very well. Just 
so some get half a hedge or half an orchard, or no 
hedge or no orchard at all—for it so happens that half 
a hedge or half an orchard, especially if it is the lower 
half that is missing, is neither so useful nor so saleable 
in the market, as half a corn crop. But our good far¬ 
mers have hedges that I am not ashamed to show 
a gainst any fence, or turn against any stock in the world, 
not excepting thievish town-boys, and this helps an 
orchard, or rather its owner, wonderfully. 
5. I suppose the actual cost of a good stock hedge, 
on good land, at the rate we now sell plants, ought not 
to exceed 50 cents per rod at most, if made by the far¬ 
mer himself. But a man off the ground cannot make 
it so cheaply by nearly one-half. At least I would 
much rather make two rods of hedge on my own grounds, 
than one rod on another man’s even if not more than 
a single mile, or even half a mile distance. For the 
trouble of keeping watch of it, and getting up a team 
and getting to it, is more than all the other work to be 
done when you are there, if but a short piece—a mile 
or less. 
6. The late severe winters have not injured our 
hedges here at all. Last winter thousands and millions 
of young seedling plants were destroyed in the nurse¬ 
ry, as in such seasons they are always liable to be. 
Hence we always take ours up in the fall, so far as we 
can, and secure them in the plant-houses ; and it is 
impossible to be certain of good plants, though they 
may appear well in the spring, without this care, for the 
seedling plants are quite apt to be injured in severe 
winters, more or less, and the injury is not always per¬ 
ceptible, even by the best judges, till after they are set 
in the hedge-row; and purchasing such plants has, 
perhaps, more than any one cause, covered the country 
in places with broken, worthless hedges. Twice in the 
last 15 years, I have delivered some such injured out¬ 
standing plants myself, without knowing it till too late, 
and had them all to supply again the noxt spring. The 
great drought also made sad work in blotching many 
pieces of new-set hedge where the plants were good, in 
1854. 
From the above and similar causes, in riding through 
the country, one will see a great many specimens of 
worthless, unsightly hedges, and is more apt to see 
them, unfortunately, on the great railroads and tho¬ 
roughfares, than anywhere else. For precisely here 
those damaged plants are most easily hawked about, 
and sold cheap; and great droves of stock are most 
likely to range and try the work of careless hands and 
neglected fences. Besides those professional hedge- 
makers , who did not always know a plow from a hoe 
when they began their peregrinations out of the cities 
and towns, to set tc superb hedges ” for the farmers for 
two prices, cash down the first year,—these found it 
more convenient to conduct their operations near the 
railroads, which they usually completed as soon as the 
first or second payment was made, and decamped for 
parts unknown, leaving the hedges and their owners to 
take care of themselves; and the latter generally 
found that their professional hedge was worth no fur¬ 
ther care from themselves, than to try to plow or grub 
it up, which is not so easily done; for this Osage Or¬ 
ange when once set out, insists that it has a right to 
make a hedge anyhow, even if not nearer together than 
once in ten rods, and you may cut it as much as you 
please, and it still persist in its right to live and make 
a fence. 
But aside from these casualties, I have never in 
all my experience or knowledge, known a plant more 
than two years old, or after its second winter’s growth, 
to be killed with cold here, or any other cause, though 
the thermometer has been sometimes 25° below zero— 
often 20°—quite often 10°; and peach trees 6 inches 
through, and grapevines, and many common apple 
trees of good size, have been killed in my grounds, 
side by side with the hedge, quite to the ground. In 
severe winters, the tops of the hedges are always kill¬ 
ed down more or less, but the root never so far ; and 
all the killing of the top has only amounted in prac¬ 
tice here to the saving of one good spring pruning. 
The first plant ever brought into this country, some 20 
years ago, is still alive in my front yard ; and my old¬ 
est hedges are decidedly the best on my place ; and the 
same is true of my brother’s in Quincy, and many oth¬ 
ers. But farther north I have learned that the plants 
last winter killed out so badly in some places in the 
young two year old hedges, that it has discouraged 
their owners—I think unwisely—for in other places 
still farther north, I learn they have stood well; and 
I must think the error, where they were killed out, 
consisted in too late culture in the fall; beside it is 
hardly probable that we shall have another winter 
combining so many peculiar causes of destruction as 
the last, perhaps in a whole century ; and he that 
abandons a young hedge, or a wheat crop, or any thing 
else, if needful on his place, from one unfortunate win¬ 
ter, is unwise, especially if there is good reason to 
think that some error in culture caused the catastro¬ 
phe. But I cannot, of course, and will not speak with 
any positiveness about either soils or climates, or any 
thing else not immediately within the range of my 
own personal experience. 
But if I were to purchase a farm myself, 200 miles 
north of this, my first effort would be, as it ever has- 
been here, to hedge it; and if the ground was dry and 
warm, I believe I should succeed; if not, I know I 
should fail, till made so by drainage. But I am of the 
opinion that there may be many places on the poor 
sandy and gravelly soils of the north, and also on the 
low and wet soils further south, where it will not pay 
to attempt this hedge. On our swampy lands and wet 
swails here, it will not do without thorough draining or 
dykeing, so as to make a good dry corn soil. 
7. The only hedge I have ever had killed down was 
burnt down under a burning building, which burnt the 
