318 [Senate 



letter from dr. james w. thompson. 



Wilmington^ {Del.) Dec. 5th, 1845. 



M. B. Bateham, Esq. : 



Dear Sir — Agreeably to my promise made you a few weeks since, 

 I now enclose you two letters I have received from Drs. Darlington 

 and Gibbons, on the subject of your enquiry relative to thorn hedges 

 for fences, — the method of rearing and planting the same, — and keep- 

 ing them in order. Their communications are so full and satisfacto- 

 ry, — their experience so much greater than my own, — that I prefer- 

 ed going into consultation with them, for your satisfaction and that 

 of your readers, to answering your queries on my own responsibility ; 

 referring you to McMahon's work on " Gardening," — the early 

 volumes of the American Farmer, — and the American Encyclopaedia 

 of Agriculture, in addition to the letters enclosed. I think your 

 friends disposed to try the cultivation of live fence, will have ample 

 information to conduct thein in their undertaking, should the soil and 

 climate of your northern and eastern sections of country be favorable 

 to their growth. For small farms and lot inclosures, haws, or thorn 

 fences, with great care and constant attention, maj^ answer, and are 

 certainly very pretty and graceful to the eye ; and among the cultiva- 

 tors of live fence, with us, for this purpose, some have preferred the 

 more delicate and graceful Cratsgus cordatha, or Virginia thorn, 

 whilst a majority have preferred the Crataegus galli or Newcastle 

 thorn, — a hardy, rougher, and more substantial native of this coun- 

 try, — and which was the principal variety you saw in your ride with 

 Mr. Skinner and myself, last fall. Where labor is cheap and abun- 

 dant, live fences may do, and are certainly highly ornamental. But, 

 after seven years trial of them, on a large farm, and where we have 

 several hundred rods of our native variety, I infinitely prefer the 

 old fashioned post and rail fence, for the reasons I will now give : 

 In the first place, it requires two seasons to vegetate the seed ; the 

 quicks must be two years old from the seed, before planting ; eight 

 or nine years must elapse before they attain to a fence ; they must be 

 trimmed twice or thrice a year. They are liable to disease a]id death, 

 which will cause breaks and chasms in the enclosures — only to be re- 

 medied by digging up one end of the fenco, to repair the breach — 

 younger plants being overshadowed and easily destroyed by intruding 

 stock or swine. In the second, — when full grown, they rob the 

 land, for eight or ten feet on each side, of much nurture for crops or 

 grass ; and on a grazing farm, where we have to renew our stock of 

 fattening cattle, — which come from western New- York, Ohio, Vir- 

 ginia, Illinois, Indiana, &c., — the hedge fence has proved but an in- 

 diflferent barrier to this description of stock, when frightened, or 

 when determined to push through, — independently of their ability to 

 break through. I have observed a constant disposition in horned cat- 

 tle in large herds, to fret or worry the limbs, not only of the thorn, 

 but other live growth within their reach, — to alleviate, perhaps, itch- 



