300 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



was appointed a committee ou programme for the September meeting, to report 

 in August. The August meeting was appointed for the third Tuesday, the 

 reguhir time, at J. B. Dumont's. The committee on transportation was given 

 one month's more time in which to report. J. B. Buck showed samples of red 

 raspberries, the Cuthbert (red) and Gregg (bh\ck), both of which showed good 

 qualities. 



Taking up the subject of " Stock in the highways," Mr. Buck read a paper 

 by S. B. Mann in the Pomological report for 1881, which urged the point that 

 •while the laws made by our Legislature are unsatisfactory or worthless, no 

 statute is necessary, as the constitution makes ample provisions. Says Mr. 

 Maun : 



The constitution allows of no law that will tax one man for the benefit of 

 another as an individual. The government deeds the individual a certain num- 

 ber of acres and guarantees to him all the rights and privileges therein, reserv- 

 ing only the power of laying along his boundary line or through his land high- 

 ways, or Avhat may be better called " public ways." Notice now that nowhere 

 in any act whatever is there any suck term as public pasture, but "highway " 

 is the term, meaning a passage way for the public. Free and unrestrained is 

 any person who chooses to peaceably pass, but he has no law, nor can there be 

 any law enacted or enforced, that allows him any other privilege than that of 

 passage. The owner of the land is required by the State to furnish the land 

 for the road and he is taxed every year on that with the rest of his farm. Not 

 a tree or a shrub or anything else that grows or is found there can be used or 

 converted to the use of any private citizen other than he who owns it. Any tree 

 or grass growing on the highway is as much the property of the owner of the- 

 land as though it were inside his enclosure, and any other person appropriating 

 it to any other purpose than to benefit or repair the passageway — and that 

 officially — is a trespasser in the full meaning of the term. It seems to me that 

 when this can be fully understood there need be no more trouble. Stock found 

 grazing in the highway, with no escort or person to drive it along, is trespass- 

 ing, and should at once be shuc up and the owner made to pay for all the trouble 

 before he can take it. 



Mr. Buck then read the following paper : 



Shall our stock run in the road? I answer. No. And why not? Because 

 they have no right there. Every man who buys a farm pays for the land to the 

 center of the road, and it is his property just as much as the laud in his orchard 

 or dooryard. I paid $75 for the land, three acres, now in the road in front of 

 my farm. What right has my neighbor to make a hog or cow pasture of that 

 land ? I have greatly desired to set maple trees along the road, but I could not 

 unless I built a fence around them to protect them, to do which was too expen- 

 sive. It is a great annoyance: (1) to the one who owns the stock, for when he 

 turns them loose in the morning he does not know where they will be at night 

 — they may be at home, or five miles away, or in somebody's crops ; (2) it is a 

 still greater annoyance to others — as for myself, I can not leave a gate open, day 

 or night, summer or winter, one minute, for fear some cattle will be at my fruit 

 trees, or up to some other mischief; if I wish to draw hay or grain I must 

 open and shut two gates, if it is twenty times a day, and if the snow is four 

 feet deep I must shovel out and shut up; (3) it is very expensive — when I 

 bought my lot it was bounded on three sides by roads and commons, and a 

 marsh of ten acres ran through the center. 



When I had a fence around the marsh I had a good pasture and that was all 

 the fence I needed except a barnyard fence and a lane to the marsh. But to 



