æval times, when it was particularly prized for the making of "mazers," a kind of drinking-vessel, a cup or goblet; and for bowls, being usually rimmed, footed or covered with silver. These, as highly prized articles, make a frequent appearance as legacies in mediæval wills.

Two kindred shrubs, the guelder rose and the wayfaring tree, are common constituents of these hedges. The leaves of the former, deeply cut, and not of uniform shape, are singularly beautiful in autumn, and its clustered fruit, equally beautiful, is also not of uniform color until quite ripe, one side being yellow and the other red. The wayfaring tree, the particular fitness of whose name is not apparent, is noticeable for its thick, mealy leaves, and for being the earliest flowering shrub of these hedge-rows in the spring; and its crimson berries. conspicuous among the dark green leaves, consequently look somewhat out of date among the buds and flowers of

summer.

Whether the elder is an indigenous shrub has been disputed, but at least it is thoroughly well established in our hedges to the great benefit of birds, who feed with avidity on its dark purple berries. Many are the migrants, such as blackcaps, redstarts, and ringousels, which make their last meal on this fruit preliminary to their crossing of the Channel. For these are the hedges and these the hills whereabouts Gilbert White, in his frequent journeys, observed so many troops of migratory birds, the ring-ousels in particular, nowadays much diminished in numbers. Such are some of the constituents of the hedges that lie along the foot of the South Down hills. These hedges, I take it, are probably the most ancient in the land, and may represent the fringe of that great forest called Anderida, which at the time of the Roman invasion stretched from VOL. LXXVII. 474

ECLECTIC.

the northern slopes of the Downs to the foot of the Surrey hills. As we see them now they follow the hollows of the hills, and mount over the insteps, as it were, of these sloping spurs, whereby at right angles to the main range the upland subsides into the plain.

Here, the soil being light and tillable, and returning rich results in corn crops, would be the first land in primitive times to come under the culture of the ancient share and coulter. The primitive tillers of the soil, if they did not actually make hedges, would at least leave the fringes of the forest clearing to keep their sheep pasturing on the Downs from breaking into the tempting green crops of the arable land. And thus, as they are the most ancient, so they are the most natural hedges in the land. It is impossible to conceive of them as having been deliberately set with all this variety of tree and shrub. Birds, no doubt, have been active agents in sowing the seeds of many of their constituents; for, indeed, these hedges, broad, high, primitive, and remote from dwellings, are ideal haunts and habitations for a large variety of birds, a paradise whose perfection is only marred by man. For in the very season when quietude and peace are most essential to the birds, when full of the toils of building their nests and hatching out and rearing their young, then also is the time when they are most exposed to the ravages of the idle shepherd boys. At that season the ewes and lambs pasture thereabouts, and the boys, devolving most of their duty upon their dogs, finding their large leisure hang heavily upon their hands, employ it only too industriously in searching these fringes of copse or these thick hedgerows for the birds' nests they may contain.

Nevertheless, a fair number of birds successfully to rear their

contrive

young, and many are the nests I have found of missel thrush, song thrush, blackbird, greenfinch, chaffinch (not a very common bird hereabouts), hedgewarbler, whitethroat (common and lesser) yellowhammer, common bunting, red-backed shrike or butcher bird, and turtle dove, with an occasional bullfinch, but never once a goldfinch. For these two latter are essentially birds of the Wealden district as regards their nesting habits; but they are frequently met with about the South Down neighborhood in autumn and winter. The turtle dove, one of the most beautiful of our migrants, can nowhere be better observed than in the fields along the foot of the Downs. Here they feed in the fallow, the green crops, or the stubble, in flocks of ten or a dozen, roosting and nesting in the neighboring hedgerows. When, alarmed, they spread their wings and tail for flight, the rich mottled brown of their plumage, with their dark fanshaped tails edged with a broad band of white, forms a pleasant picture of bird life. The red-backed shrike is somewhat common, and there are few fairer birds to look upon, despite his habitual frown and carnivorous habits. Gilbert White speaks of this bird as rare about Selborne.

When we come to the history of hedges, we find that they make an appearance in many connections in rural economy: in the daily details of life, in the relations between laws and customs, lords and peasantry.

We know that the ancients were acquainted with quickset hedges, and Varro speaks of live and dead hedges, ditches, and banks, chiefly along the roadsides; and he mentions "spina," or thorns of some kind or other, as a constituent element in them. Around the clearings in the forests, or the corn crops of the open lands, the ancient Britons must necessarily have made hedges or fences of some description.

Since these, our ancestors, were already celebrated for their wickerwork, woven from the willows which abounded in the backwaters of their rivers, the margins of their marshes, and the silent pools of their forests, we may judge that their hedges were constructed in a somewhat similar manner, and that they consisted to a great extent of live twigs interwoven, and strengthened with stakes and posts. And with the same kind of hedge, but stronger, they protected their dwellings and their "wicks."

In the Middle Ages we read of a variety of hedge called "contesta," formed of posts yoked together, as the name suggests, with interwoven twigs, which, to judge from an ancient illustration, connected the posts at the top only. Even at this period England was noted as a country "full of hedges"; but this fulness, as noted by foreign observers, must have been merely comparative with other lands, for there is plenty of proof that the open-field system of agriculture very generally prevailed, whereby the holdings of the various tenants lay scattered in the fenceless fields, divided from each other only by balks of unploughed land. Consequent upon this came the need for the great variety of "wards" and "herds," which is still evidenced by the common occurrence of personal names with those suffixes, such as Hayward. Kenward, (kineward), Coward (cow-herd), and Shepherd.

Such hedges as there were existed between the lord's demesne land and the holdings of the villeins, and around the small gardens of these and of the cottars, and around the numerous parks, the orchards, and the churchgarth.

This fenceless condition, with its manifold inconveniences, was doomed to desuetude, symptoms of which were appearing even before the important

changes in agriculture resulting from the great upheaval of the Reformation, the development of the woollen trade and the consequent increased importance of sheep, and the introduction of turnips and other green crops.

During these early ages hedges have occasional mention in records of national life. From the laws of Ina, republished by Alfred the Great, it appears that occasionally a tenant would take it into his head to hedge his holding "in the common meadowland divided into strips," while another would refrain; and regulations are laid down to meet the complications that might arise. Here it may be remarked that the Saxon word used for "to hedge," "tynanne," survives in essence until to-day in "tine," a West-country wood for hedging; and also in tinnet or tennet, meaning the wood used in the process, an allowance of which was claimed in a great number of manors by the tenants up to comparatively recent times, anciently under the name of "hedge-bote" or "hey-bote." Thus we find a dispute on this subject coming even before Parliament, for in the fourteenth century Richard le Waleys, Lord of Glynde and Pelinges, complains that his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury (his overlord) "has robbed him . . . and for two years seized his heybote pertaining to his manor of Glynde;

therefore he prays our Lord the King, for God and his mercy, that he will keep him in his estate," etc.

Under the Saxon régime one of the most universal rent services was the obligation of the ceorl (the villein of the next domination) to do an allotted number of yards of "gafol-hedging" for the lord "in his own time," to trim the deer-hedge and to keep it whole. Nor was the thegn, or lord himself, exempt from maintaining the deerhedge of his lord the king; while all had to contribute to "hedge the burg," vill or tun.

An obligation more widely spread was that of the men of the hundred to maintain the wayside hedges, to trim them, and to keep whole, and those who failed in those duties were duly amerced, subject to amendment within an allotted time. Thus, to quote one out of countless instances, a court-roll of the time of Henry VII. records that a certain tenant was "presented" for allowing his hedge over against the lord's park to become defective, and he was given a set period within which to make amends, "sub pœnâ xxd." Another is seen in a court-roll of the reign of Elizabeth, when at a hallmote three tenants were "presented" as failing in their obligation to trim their hedge and clear the ditch, and they were allowed the liberal grace of five months in which to carry out the requisite hedging, "sub pœnâ 11s. vid." each.

There remains another aspect under which to consider hedges, and that is in their relation to surface geology. It is particularly in the South Down country that this point of view is instructive. The Downs, it is needless to say, run east to west, and are pierced at intervals and at right angles by little rivers which run from the watershed of the Weald southwards into the Channel. These rivers, whose valleys show clear evidences of having been estuaries of the sea-and that at no very remote period-are fed at short intervals by small streams or brooks; and their little valleys, in their turn, show as distinct evidences of having been in their time estuaries, as it were, or narrow long creeks of the river into which they flow.

Although here and there alongside one or other of these streams distinct traces of a river-terrace are to be seen, yet it is mainly by the hedges that notice is drawn to the altered condition of the face of the country through which these streams flow, for, run

ning roughly parallel to them, one sees on either side, at a distance, it may be, of fifty or a hundred yards, a hedge set, perhaps, on a little ridge; and these hedges may so run for a quarter of a mile, or a whole mile, perhaps― sinuously where the stream winds, straightly where it is straight; and not a single hedge is seen running at right angles down to the stream-side, or, as we might say, across the little valley or plain. But at intervals a line of post-and-rail fences into fields the rich meadowland. Now, what is the meaning of this arrangement, by which this long low meadow, this little valley of a little stream, has, when divided up into fields, been fenced by post-andrail, and not by living, hedges, while a line of ancient quickset, or a copse, or little wood runs parallel with the stream at a distance of a few score yards? Clearly it means that this low tract of land was once the bed of a much larger stream flowing into a larger river. In long process of time, the river, from various causes, sank, and its flow became less and less, until Longman's Magazine.

at length it subsided into a small stream. During this process the land it was deserting would be a swamp, growing rushes and grass of a kind too coarse for cattle to graze upon; while the ground itself would be very detrimental to them from its waterlogged condition.

Hence the farmers would set their hedges on the ancient margin of the stream-the margin now of a swampy, useless tract of land. By drainage, natural and artificial, into the still subsiding stream, this land has ultimately become fit for pasture and for bearing rich crops of hay, and consequently has been divided up into fields of convenient and average acreage by suitable, but not beautiful, fences of post-andrail.

Such conditions as these may be seen in many instances down the valleys of our little Sussex rivers; and they show how great are the changes that have taken place in the conformation of our land within historic times, and it is by the hedges that the eye is guided to their recognition.

W. Heneage Legge.

sur

When the Hero found himself alone with the conviction (indicated by a pleasant smile) that he was not likely to be disturbed by any member of his family, he began to reflect (and the smile became slightly derisive) that, primarily, he was not so much prised at his own good fortune as at the amazing fact that his wife had no knowledge of it. That morning he had woke up as usual with a vague feeling of regret that he had not died in the night, and he had left his bed, earlier than usual (and very reluctantly), because his wife had reminded him that some friends of hers were coming to play croquet in the afternoon, and that the lawn ought to be rolled before the dew was off it. While he was rolling it, the postman flitted up on a bicycle, and he had asked the man if there was a registered letter. Why had he done so? He was not expecting a registered letter, and, as a rule, he never opened his letters till after breakfast, because they were sure to contain something or other potent enough to take the edge off an appetite never too keen. And always-but always!-he had been constrained to share with his wife what news, good or bad, they might hold. Again, he had read his registered letter, his wonderful letter, on the lawn in the full blaze of the morning sun, and he could not doubt that some expression of surprise, some gesture, had revealed its import. Three windows on the second storey of Pembroke Lodge overlooked the lawn, and behind each of them, at 8.15 A.M., a woman was dressing. At breakfast he had met his wife and daughters with a blush that aroused no comment! And -what a wretched actor he was!-during breakfast he had betrayed his excitement a score of times, and the

others, those lynx-eyed women, had been looking everywhere except into his tell-tale face.

The Hero chuckled softly, as he lit his cigar. Then he sat down to read for the second time his letter from Fairyland:

"To Major-General Henry Paganel, V.C., C.B.

"Sir,-We beg to advise you of the sudden death of our late client, your kinsman, Mr. James Paganel, who expired at his club in Melbourne last Tuesday. Mr. Paganel, we believe, had not the honor of your acquaintance, but he was proud to count himself of kin to so famous and distinguished a soldier. He has shown his appreciation of your services to the Empire by making you his residuary legatee. And we are in a position to state that after various legacies have been paid, a sum of at least one hundred and thirty thousand pounds will accrue to you. This money is at present invested in sound industrial enterprises.

"We shall be happy to act for you, as we have acted for many years for your lamented kinsman; and, if it be possible, we would urge the propriety of your coming to Australia at a reasonably early date.

"We have the honor to be, &c., &c."

The Hero lay back in his well-worn chair, smoking and thinking. It had come at last, this material prosperity which he had sought so vainly for more years than he cared to reckon. Had It come-too late?

Sitting there, he held an accounting; and presently he struck a balance with a nice sense of knowing how and where he stood. Some men, and most women, unconsciously falsify the en