the ridge. Stakes are set the whole length of the fence line in the center. The distance between the quick rows is two feet. The trenching is commenced by first plowing a light furrow toward the center, which will rest on the space between the trenches. Next turn a light furrow on top of the first, depositing this also over the space between the trenches. Then plow a furrow out of the bottom of each trench, turning both furrows outward from the lines of the quick rows. By this process of taking two furrows from each trench, a suitable supply of mold is deposited precisely where it is most needed to fill in about the roots of the quicks, when these are set up.

The old mode of setting the quicks, at uniform distance between the rows, was by means of a line with colored strings tied to it at the required distances. The land side of the furrow was the support to stand the quicks against, and guide them in a straight line. But the land side of the trench was liable to be crooked, and the labor and time required were considerable. A more serious objection, however, is that some of the roots of the quicks are turned aside from their natural position by pressing against the wall of the trench. This misplacement of the roots retards their growth in some degree, but the injury is less than that of the same kind incident to slit-setting, by means of a spade. Another defect is that all the soil is turned out on one side of the trench, provid ing no mold to fill in on the other side of the quicks.

THE SETTING GUIDE.

As a rope or garden line cannot be kept straight, and the land side of single furrows is liable to the same objection, a tool has been devised which may answer the three-fold purpose of spacing the quicks as they are placed in the trenches, as a support to the quicks, and as a guide to keep them in line; these several objects being desirable, and even necessary, before and during the operation of filling in the soil, and earthing up the quicks. This setting guide will cost only a few cents and a little labor. It is made by taking a narrow strip of inch board or three or four inch batten, fourteen to sixteen feet long, and attaching to it three strips of hard wood, one in the middle, and one at each end, for legs, which should be sixteen to eighteen inches long. Figure 7 gives a side outline of this form as set for use, about one-third of its width from the land side of the furrow-trench. Vertical chalk marks can be made on this setting guide, or small pins of wood may be inserted at the distance the quicks are to stand in the rows, two feet being a good distance for a two-row hedge, giving one plant to every foot in length of the fence. Of course, the quicks in each row will be placed opposite the spaces in the other. The quicks in the figure are spaced one foot between, as for a single-row hedge. If holes are made at intervals of four inches, the entire length of the guide, pins can be inserted, and the quicks be set at any number of inches apart that is a multiple of four. By placing the quicks in the angles formed by the pins or pegs and the horizontal strip, they are supported in position on two sides, and can be placed as they are to remain in the trenches, with ease and rapidity. When the lines are properly staked in each trench, the stakes being set so that the guide may be against two at each time of its removal, there will be no sagging, nor any side-ways deflection of the setting guide or the row, while the quicks are placed and supported in a good form to have their roots. properly extended and molded, and the soil filled in on both sides of the

rows.

RESULTS OF CLOSE TRIMMING.

It is supposed that none but single-row hedges will be trained by the repressive process of trimming twice annually, for the quicks in hedge of this form will be slender in consequence of the crowding of the roots from thicker setting in the rows. Trimming does thicken the surface of the hedge by causing a stubbed, stooling form of growth, but this form at the top soon shades the bottom part, keeping out air, light, and moisture.

After a few years of close pruning, twice each year, inlaid hedges present a thin bottom growth. Trimmed hedges cannot well be trained more than two and a half to three feet high, a yard across at the bottom, while narrow at the top. Of these dimensions, a continually trim med hedge is not always a safe fence as against jumping horses and cattle, and its ultimately thinned bottom opens a door for the inroads of untamed swine. On the other hand, pleaching causes a thick, bottom growth, thicker after pleaching than before, by the combination of old and of new growth, and while ample new growth is forming in the bot tom the old saplings, now pleached layers, are still kept growing; and if not cut two-thirds through they will grow too much and prevent growth lower down, many of them sending up new shoots in all parts of the fence. The pleached saplings also add great strength to such forms of fence by combining an upright and an oblique, or an old and new growth, crossing and strengthening both forms of thorn material. The young shoots from the bottom of a pleached hedge tend outward in a degree toward the light, but the brush of the laid saplings can be spread wide enough to protect this growth, or so much of it as may be required, so that a properly pleached hedge, while making ample growth in the bottom also protects it. Hence a healthy growth of Osage thorn hedge may be made renewable for ages by successive and reasonable pleaching.

REPAIRING HEDGE, FENCE.

A hedge that has been trimmed from five to seven years becomes so thin and inefficient as a fence in its lower parts, that it must either be laid or repaired. Such a hedge may be repaired by thrusting detached brush cut from the thickest places into the holes as compactly as this can be done and driving down stakes, or working saplings through it obliquely, according to the necessity of resisting swine, or straying hedge-breakers of any sort. The process of mending requires fre quent repetition, when stock is grazed to any considerable extent near poor hedges, and laying will soon be found to be more economical than patching with repairs, however carefully performed.

HEDGING WITHOUT LAYING

consists in cutting back the quicks the first year at six to eight inches from the ground, cutting off the vertical shoots six inches higher the second year, and repeating the same process and distance the third season, when the hedge row will be about two feet in height. It is then allowed to grow another foot higher when the top growth is again carefully cut off, after which the hedge is kept down by close trimming in July and November of each year. This is hedging by negation, or repressing it instead of first encouraging growth, and then training so as continually to maintain it in the bottom equally with the top of the

hedge. The plan involves the performance of so much labor, and appears so little adapted to extensive hedging that we do not recommend it, believing that it would retard the extension of true hedging.

TRAINING HEDGE FENCE.

Osage thorn fence, when kept down by trimming, should be trimmed. as soon as the spring growth, sometimes called the midsummer shoot, is completed. This may be earlier or later, according to the character of the season, but the interval of rest between the first and the second stage of the year's growth usually occurs before the first of July. During this interval of rest, directly after the first growth is complete, is the best time for summer trimming. The second trimming may be performed at any time between the falling of the leaves and the setting in of severe freezing weather, but no trimming should be done when the sap is congealed to any great extent by frost.

TRIMMING TOOLS.

Some persons may prefer one form of tool, others another. A variety might be suggested, but we sketch two only of the best for practical uses. Figure 8 represents the trimming hook, and Figure 9 the trimming blade. Both require handles from two to three feet long, according to the height of the operator. When the growth to be cut off is small, the hook with a shorter handle may be used with one band, but in all cases when the shoots are thick and vigorous, the trimming blade is the most effective and the most convenient tool.

HOW TO TRIM HEDGE FENCE.

If, in the process of trimming, the shoots are cut toward the bottom growth of the wood as downward in an unlaid one, or against the leaning direction of the layers in a laid hedge, the ends from which the shoots are cut are more or less split, bruised, or maimed, and the result will be dead, stubbed ends. To avoid such injuries, all trimming should be performed by striking toward the tips, as upward with unlaid hedge, and in the direction the brush leans with such as have been pleached. The principle is the same in trimming hedge as in pruning by hand. The wood cuts will heal well, if they are smooth, and the new growth will start at the top instead of below the ends that have been cut.

PLEACHING HEDGE.

The season in which to pleach is not when the hedge is growing, but in the fall, between the falling of the leaves and the time when winter sets in. Osage thorn hedge should not be pleached during severe freezing weather, but pleaching may be done in mild weather, when there is but little frost in the wood, and in the winter in southern latitudes. In the northern belt, where the Osage thorn thrives, which is as far north as southern Wisconsin, it is not safe to pleach in winter. But if not done at the best time in the fall, this work may be performed before the buds swell in the spring, as early as the middle of March.

An Osage thorn hedge will attain a given size earlier in some localities than in others, according to the richness of soil, and other conditions affecting the rate of growth. Size rather than age, therefore, may de