238 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



the careful enclosure of land has been an invariable characteristic of 

 English farm and home life. The careful historian cannot fail to 

 find therein a cherished and open mode of affirmation of rights in 

 hind, and its exclusive possession, that have been dear to the 

 ICnglish born since English liberties began. Fortescue, in his De 

 legibus legum Amjlia in 1403, declares that '•'the importance of 

 having the land enclosed is generally admitted. Even the feeding 

 lands are likewise surrounded with hedges and ditches." 



Sir A. Fitzherbert, who wrote and published the first English 

 work on rural aflfairs. the "Book of Husbandry," in 1532, which it 

 is acknowledged gave great stimulus to early British fjxrming, urges 

 the enclosure of land as the foremost principle of good husbandry. 

 He strenuously advises the division of land into proper enclosures, 

 by which operation he says : "If an acre of land be worth sixpence 

 (ren':al) before it is enclosed, it will be worth eight pence when it 

 is enclosed." 



No stronger declaration of the English fence system need be 

 sought than is furnished in the series of Enclosure Acts which, com- 

 mencing in the time of Charles II., have continued down to our own 

 time. The total of land enclosed by 2,591 Acts, up to the end of 

 1805, was 4,187,056 acres. Blackstone (Commentaries 3d, p. 188) 

 makes special reference to this system and principle which brought 

 under cultivation immense areas of common and waste fields. 

 "Thus," says a leading writer on British farming matters, in 1816, 

 "the commons and common fields, a disgrace to English agriculture, 

 are being wiped away." 



I am tempted to present to you the sturdy British meaning atid 

 achievement of these Enclosure Acts, illustrated in the fencing 

 done under them. Each Act named the Commissioners to carry 

 out its provisions, who were required not merely to allot bounda- 

 ries, but to secure the erection of prescribed fences. The general 

 view of the agriculture of Devon, 1813, gives in detail the modes of 

 fencing pursued, as thus : 



"Raising a mound on a nine foot baso, with a ditch three feet wide on each side 

 (making the whole site of the fence fifteen feet), facing the mound with stones to the 

 height of four feet, sodding it three feet higher above the stone work, and leaving it 

 four and a half feet broad on the top. Then planting the top with two rows of Law- 

 thorne." 



This is, safely enough we should think, spoken of as "a fence 

 permanently efficient for the purpose of subdivision and boundary, 

 as well as an excellent protection for stock." The average size of 



