CROOKED HEDGES.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] Silt.-4 believe both of your correspondents are right as to two causes of the irregularity of hedges ; but I think there is also a third cause, more interesting, because very old,—viz,, the tendency of the old Saxon ploughman who first broke up, the waste into the old uninolosed common fields to turn the
furrow near the end towards him. The driver walked on the near side of the team, guiding them with his whip. This tended to make the furrows approach toward the form of a retroverted S. There is said to be in Yorkshire an old common field originally bounded by a winding river. Later, a road was made nearly parallel to the average course of this stream. When common-ownership ceased, each strip was assigned as severalty to the then possessor ; the irregular strip between road and river still belongs to small owners, and is cultivated in little potato-plots ; but each plot belongs to the owner not of the long strip immediately opposite across the road, but to the owner of the next strip, the strip one before in the order of ploughing.—.I am, Sir, &o.,
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