l help to do it, so I would warn my
riding brethren not to make matters worse for their womenkind by
providing any other kind of mount.

CHAPTER XV.

FENCES, COUNTRY AND GATES.

From a hunting point of view, the chief value of fences lies in the fact
that they retard the hounds more than the horses, and help the foxes to
save their brushes. On arable land, fences as a rule are used merely as
boundaries; but on grazing land, they are needed to prevent stock from
roving beyond their assigned limits. Hence, in a grass country, the
obstacles are generally much more difficult to negotiate than on tilled
ground. Also, the nature of grazing stock demands variation in the
stiffness and height of the fences, which, in the Midlands, have to
restrain the migratory propensities of frisky young bullocks; but in
dairy-farming counties like Cheshire, much smaller and weaker ones amply
serve their purpose in acting as barriers to placid bovine matrons.

Farmers in the Shires have found that hawthorn hedges make the most
serviceable fences under old time regulations. When these hedges are
allowed to grow in a natural manner, they take the form of a bullfinch
(Fig. 90), which, though impossible at many places, often leaves a gap
at others. Consequently, bullfinches are gradually going out of fashion
in the Shires, and are generally converted into cut-and-laid fences, of
which there is an example in Fig. 106. This alteration is usually made
in winter, and is effected by cutting with a bill-hook about half way
through the small trunks of the hawthorn shrubs, turning them to the
left, and interlacing their tops and their branches, as we may see in
Fig. 107, which shows us the appearance Fig. 106 presented during its
construction. A cut-and-laid is usually about 3 feet 9 inches high, and
is the wrong kind of obstacle to "chance," because it is very stiff.
Some hunting people who know very little about country life, call a
cut-and-laid fence a "stake-and-bound fence," which (Fig. 108) is an
artificial barrier made by putting a row of stakes in the ground and
twisting brushwood between them. Stake-and-bound fences are common in
Kent, and are not nearly so dangerous to "chance" as a cut-and-laid,
because the ends of their stakes are only stuck in the ground. The
practice of cutting and laying hedges is so general in the Midlands,
that we rarely see a bullfinch which does not show signs of having been
tampered with in this manner. Ev