IN SCOTLAND.

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the depredations which are frequently committed by poorpeople in the neighbourhood, in carrying away the materialsof these rails for fuel. Mr Forbes of Callender, who hasplanted not less than six millions of thorns, and whose linesof fencing have extended to nearly four hundred miles, orabout 74,000 roods of nineteen feet each, protects his younghedges, by means of a ditch on each side, of four feet wide,the intermediate mound standing on a base of five feet, sothat the whole space occupied by the original fence is four-teen feet wide; or he builds on either side a turf or sod wallof four and a half feet high. When the hedge becomes suf-ficient for a fence, the walls are levelled, and the ditches fill-ed up, the hedge alone being left to occupy the ground. MrForbes purchases the seedling thorns, which he trains up ina nursery upon his estate for two or three years, and plantsthem out in his fence lines at four inches distance, putting anoak, elm, or beech plant, or some other young tree for hedge*row timber at every three yards’ distance.

The most convenient and generally useful mode, however,of planting a thorn-hedge in Scotland , is that which is mostusually followed ; which is to place the row of thorns in theface of a mound or clap-dike of earth, which protects thegrowing thorns on one side, while the ditch from which thedike is constructed, fences the young hedge on the other side.A powerful argument in favour of this plan, is derived fromthe general want in Scotland of fit materials for constructingpermanent rail fences, without which it is impossible to rearthorn-hedges to any useful purpose upon flat unguardedridges, in the manner hitherto proposed.

For this purpose, a ditch is dug in the proposed line ofthe fence, with the earth taken out of which a mound orclap-dike is formed on one side, leaving a shelf or scarce-ment of two or three inches broad, between the edge of theditch and the foundation of the dike. The surface or ma-nured soil of the ditch is first dug, and of it a banklet isformed, three or four inches high, having a slight slope