Page:Aesthetic Papers.djvu/238

228 a garden-like aspect to the land it encloses; but it cannot compare in point of utility with a firm stone wall. When a hedge becomes gapped, it requires years to repair it; but, if a stone wall falls down, it is very soon replaced. Live fences, however, may be used to advantage where stone is not to be found. Sometimes they may be introduced as ornaments, with very good effect.

There is a native shrub, abundant in this vicinity, most admirably adapted for fences,—the common cockspur-thorn (Cratægus Crus galli). In all the essentials of a fencing shrub it fully equals the English hawthorn, to which, indeed, it is closely allied. The spines of this shrub are more than an inch long; so that a hedge formed of it would present an almost impregnable barrier, bidding defiance to all intruders, whether biped or quadruped. Several plants of this shrub have been suffered to stand near the entrance of the Forest-river road, till they have assumed the size of trees. In the spring, they are covered with a profusion of white blossoms; and, in the fall, their rich scarlet fruit never fails to attract attention. In these particulars, this shrub strikingly resembles its English congener. Indeed, the points of resemblance are so many and so striking that it ought to be called the American hawthorn. Like the English haw, its fruit requires two years to vegetate.

The barberry, so very abundant in our vicinity, is supposed to be an introduced shrub. It corresponds exactly with the Berberis vulgaris of Europe. It has only a limited locality on the seaboard of New England, and is riot found anywhere else on this continent. The vigor of its growth is especially note-worthy. It rises by the way-side; it grows in the chinks and crevices of the rocks; it spreads over neglected pastures, and looks around with a saucy confidence that seems to say, &quot;All the world was made for barberry bushes.&quot;

It is doubtless the design of nature, that plants should be colonized; that there should be a change of localities; that, when any part of the earth is rendered unfit for producing one race of plants, it shall be furnished with seeds of another. The husbandman does but imitate this process of nature, when he pursues what is called a rotation of crops. Various