eet are looked to with the most eager concern. Iron wire
grows faster than hawthorn or buckthorn. It doubtless costs less.
It needs no yearly trimming, like shrubs with sap and leaves. It
does not occupy a furrow's width as a boundary between two fields.
It may be easily transposed to vary enclosures. It is not a nesting
place for destructive birds or vermin. These and other arguments,
of the same utilitarian genus, are making perceptible headway. Will
they ever carry the day against the green hedges? I think they
would, very soon, if the English farmer owned the land he
cultivates. But such is rarely the case. Still, this fact may not
prevent the final consummation of this policy of material interest.
In a great many instances, the tenant might compromise with the
landlord in such a way as to bring about this "modern improvement."
And a comparatively few instances, showing a certain per centage of
increased production per acre to the former, and a little additional
rentage to the latter, would suffice to give the innovation an
impulse that would sweep away half the hedges of the country, and
deface that picture which so many generations have loved to such
enthusiasm of admiration.

Will the trees of the hedge-row be exposed to the same end? I think
they will. Though trees are the most sacred things the earth begets
in England, as has already been said, the farmer here looks at them
with an evil eye, as horse-leeches that bleed to death long
stretches of the land he pays 2 pounds per acre for annually to his
landlord. The hedge, however wide-bottomed, is his fence; and
fencing he must have. But these trees, arising at narrow intervals
from the hedge, and spreading out their deadening shades upon his
wheatfields on either side, are not useful nor ornamental to him.
They may look prettily, and make a nice picture in the eyes of the
sentimental tourist or traveller, but he grudges the ground they
cover. He could well afford to pay the landlord an additional
rentage per annum more than equal to the money value of the yearly
growth of these trees. Besides, the landlord has, in all
probability, a large park of trees around his mansion, and perhaps
compact plantations on land unsuited to agriculture. Thus the high
value of these hedge-row trees around the fields of his tenant,
which he will realise on the spot, together with some additional
pounds in rent annually to himself and heirs, would probably
facilita