These bushes,
grow up in thick rods and stocks, spiny and intractable, from the bank to
a height of perhaps twelve feet. The rest of the fence-stuff is
whitethorn, nearly as ill to deal with as the blackthorn, and perhaps a
few clumps of ash and wild rose. Slashing, hewing, tearing down, and
bending in, he works steadily down the hedge day by day. All the time he
is using his judgment at every stroke. Some he hews out at the base and
flings behind him on the field. Much he cuts off at what will be the level
of the hedge. But all the most vigorous stems of blackthorn and whitethorn
he half cuts through and then bends over, twisting the heads to the next
stocks or uprights, or, where there are no stocks, driving in stout stakes
cut from the discarded blackthorns. When finished the newly mended hedge
consists of uprights, mostly rooted in their native bank, and fascine-like
bundles--the heads of these uprights, which are bent and bound
horizontally to the other uprights or stakes. This is the universal "stake
and bond" hedge of the shires, impenetrable to cattle, unbreakable, and
imperishable, because the half-cut bonds, the stakes, and the small stuff
all shoot again, and in a few years make the famous "bullfinch" with stake
and bond below, and a tall mass of interlacing thorns and small stuff
above.
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