or hereafter for the proprietor, and only a few stakes and bavins for the farmer.[75] It is by no means an uncommon thing, to observe every ash tree in a hedge reduced to stumps by successive pollardings. Many a landlord would shudder at the thought of breaking up an old productive sward, and not regard the topping of an ash; whereas this latter act is infinitely more injurious, ultimately, than the former. The land may, and will probably, recover, but the tree is lost for ever, as to any profitable purposes for the owner. The farmer might perhaps tell the agent when he remonstrated, that he must have firewood, and hedging stuff; but the wants of the former have decreased by the facility of obtaining other fuel, and neither is to be supplied by the landlord at such a ruinous subversion of present and future benefit. I am not so silly as to enlarge upon the beauty of what has been called “picturesque farming;” but when we cast our eyes over the country, and see such rows of dark, club-headed posts, we cannot but remark upon the unsightly character they present, and consider it neither laudable to deform our beautiful country by the connivance, nor proper attention to individual profit to allow the continuation of it. The ash, after this mutilation, in a few years become flattened at the summit, moisture lodges in it, and decay commences, the central parts gradually mouldering away, though for many years the sap wood will throw out vigorous shoots for the hatchet. The goat moth now too commences its mordications, and the end is not distant. But the wood of the ash appears in every stage subject to injury; when in a dry state the weevils mine holes through it; when covered by its bark, it gives harbor to an infinite variety of insects, which are the appointed agents for the removal of the timber: the ashen bar of a stile, or a post, we may generally observe to be regularly scored by rude lines diverging from a central stem, like a trained fruit-tree, by the meanderings of a little insect (ips niger, &c.), being the passages of the creatures feeding on the wood.