These subdivisions gave great scope for neighbourly feeling. A man might have a tree that was no real good to him and damaged his neighbour’s patch by keeping sunshine off; but very few men would help a neighbour by cutting down a tree. My grandfather writes to my father, 5 January 1853, “I saw ***** yesterday, and he told me he was glad to say that Mr *****’s great elm tree was blown down, for it did so much injury to his garden. I should say that, for profit, the tree ought to have been thrown long ago, for it was equally large forty years ago as now: therefore it will (I think) be found decayed in the bottom--if so, much lessened in value.” He writes on 17 September 1857, “Mr ***** has cut down an ash tree in my hedge. I have no wish to go to law about it, but one cannot stand by and see one’s property taken with impunity.... The rule is, if you can pass a shovel to take up sufficient earth for lading the hedge, the tree belongs to the field of the opposite party; but if you must go outside it, the tree of course belongs to the hedge.” The neighbour said there was “width enough for the fattest man in the parish” between the tree and hedge. There was an arbitration, and the tree was awarded to my grandfather. I suppose the fattest man in the parish was no wider than a shovel, or else the neighbour had made room for him by digging into the hedge. A man diverted a watercourse, and in heavy rains the water stirred his cesspool up and spread the contents on another man’s land below. He said it would enrich the land--“it is worth some pounds a year”--but the other man would not have it--“if it is so very valuable as he makes out, why trouble other people with it?” My grandfather writes to my father, 21 January 1864, “As fast as ***** turns the water and makes up the embankment, at some time or other (no one sees him) his neighbour breaks it down.” At the same time another man was diverting another watercourse and stopping his cesspool up, thereby impoverishing a neighbour’s land below; and that neighbour was aggrieved--“it has always runned under his stables for time out of mind.” My grandfather mentions people who could say which way these cesspools overflowed in former times. “They are all old men; and let them die, there would be but little evidence that would be substantial. Would it not be worth while to get their depositions taken now?” In ancient Rome there was a case of a man fixing gargoyles on his house in such a manner that they shot the rainwater off his roof into the front door of his neighbour opposite. We have that spirit here. The end of one man’s garden was opposite another man’s house, and the other man’s pig got into the garden and did some damage there. So the injured man cleaned out his own pigstye and made a nice manure heap in his garden, within a few feet of the other man’s front door, in just the right position for the prevalent winds to blow the perfume in.