244 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



should have taken root if thorough!}' practical, a ver}' exhaustive 

 report on the Fence question appears in the Iowa State Agricultural 

 Report for 1863. 



That writer does not conceal the burdensome facts of fencing. 

 He sa3s : 



"Even in States where the timber ia of the best quality and is abundant, so much so 

 that it is an object to get it off the land, the cost of fencing their land exceeds the cost 

 of the buildings required for the comfort of the inhabitants." 



This would be confessedly a good State for any writer in Maine 

 who should set out to banish fences altogether. It was written not 

 in Maine with its abundant forests, but in Iowa where trees are 

 scarce, and wood the sole material, yet this Iowa report states solidly 

 the American idea, which Iowa farmers have always sustained in 

 practice. 



"•Whatever the laws may be, Iowa farmers will be led b}- practical 

 good sense to fence a large pai't of their lands," and he adds : "Advo- 

 cates of the no fence theory refer to Common law and insist that we 

 shall return to it. But England is the home of Common law. It is the 

 pride and boast of her people. With all the protection it is flippantly 

 claimed the Common law gives to open fields, the people of England 

 have more thoroughly and effectually fenced their grain fields, their 

 pasture fields, their orchard paths, their gardens and lawns than any 

 other people on the face of the earth," and for this he gives the 

 genuine English and Anglo-American reason : 



"The lovo of home is fostered by the quiet enjoyment and exclusive possession of 

 property and the assurance of security when enjoying it." 



Says the United States Agricultural Report for 1809 : "The love 

 of exclusive possession is the mainstay of societ}'." And almost as 

 much is declared in the plain farmer's statement in the Rural New 

 Yorker in 1856, a comparison that will hardly do for Maine : 

 "Good and secure fences are better than hot toddy to sleep upon." 



Opposing the no fence theory- at the period of its strongest 

 presentation nearly thirty years ago, the Rural Neiv Yorker in 1856 

 declared : 



"We cannot get along without fences as a necessary evil, if such they are. A 

 scarcity of timber may make the present fence materials too costly, but other materials 

 will bo drawn from the great reservoir of nature." 



Says the Farmers' Dictionary about the same time: "Had the 

 systems of soiling and enclosing pastures In' portable fences been 

 profitable, they would long ago been adopted by practical farmers." 



