Again, do we not everywhere find twice the number of hedges that are required; and, to add to the mischief, these filled with trees? In many places we see elms not more than three yards apart. Here the shade would be intolerable, but the farmer is allowed to lop them until they look not unlike the stuck-up tails of French poodle dogs—a process which certainly diminishes the evils they entail upon the farmer, but renders the timber comparatively useless.
But, say the advocates of tall hedges and hedge-row timber, “How beautiful they make the country look! Your plan would leave it all bare and desolate; no song of birds to cheer the wayfarer,” &c. But stop, good people; we love trees, but we do not care so much for straight lines of stuck-up besoms. Let the landlord grow his woods and his groves, and plant his parks. Let him put trees in parts which will grow nothing better, and in belts to keep off malignant winds; and even here (the best places for them), let him be content with their pleasure and profit as a rent for the ground they occupy, and not, as some do, insist upon the tenant yearly planting trees in positions which must injure so much land which he is still to pay rent for. This is about as tyrannical as to make a schoolboy carry a birch, and ask for its application.
Fig. 1. Field with its old divisions, now removed, as marked by the dotted lines.
As regards the loss of land by the division into smaller fields, we cannot do better than copy the former outlines of an arable field on our own farm. This, which is now one field of over fifty acres, was formerly in fifteen fenced fields, each with a ragged hedge—of anything but quicks—planted upon raised mounds. Now, the gain in the removal of fences, indicated by the dotted lines (see [fig. 1]), may be explained by the following calculations:—
| Acr. | Rds. | |
| Ground, 2 yards wide, occupied by the mounds and hedges, about | 1 | 2 |
| One foot and a half on either side of the mounds which cannot be ploughed, about | 0 | 3 |
| Total of gain in 50 acres | 2 | 1 |
| Or, per cent., 4a. 2r. | ||
From these data, then, we may conclude that if available land equal in extent to a county may be gained by keeping fences within bounds, this may be more than doubled by grubbing up, not merely useless, but mischievous fences, and discountenancing the growth of hedge-row timber.
Now, although we reside in the county of the Dorsetshire poet, we are not of those who would curtail the privileges of the poor by closing up all footpaths, or by too rigidly curtailing the road space; but as long as the farmer has to pay rent for the ground needlessly occupied by badly-constructed hedge-rows, we think it due to him, and even to the poor themselves, that land now so occupied should in future be made food-producing; and with these sentiments we would conclude this chapter by quoting the following
DORSETSHIRE DITTY.
(From Poems by William Barnes.)