And when they are gone, they will be missed more than the amateurs of agricultural artistry imagine at the present moment.

What some one has said of the peasantry, may be said, with almost equal deprecation, of these picturesque tit-bits of land, which,-- "Once destroyed, never can be supplied." And destroyed they will be, as sure as science.

As large farms are swallowing up the little ones between them, so large fields are swallowing these interesting patches, the broad-bottomed hedging of which sometimes measures as many square yards as the space it encloses.
There is much reason to fear that the hedge-trees will, in the end, meet with a worse fate still.

Practical farmers are beginning to look upon them with an evil eye--an eye sharp and severe with pecuniary speculation; that looks at an oak or elm with no artist's reverence; that darts a hard, dry, timber-estimating glance at the trunk and branches; that looks at the circumference of its cold shadow on the earth beneath, not at the grand contour and glorious leafage of its boughs above.

The farmer who was taking us over his large and highly-cultivated fields, was a man of wide intelligence, of excellent tastes, and the means wherewithal to give them free scope and play.