DISCUSSION ON FENCES AND FENCING. 13 



cannot remove them I wish to say a word for the credit of my 

 brother farmers. We have it thrown upon us that we are stupid, 

 have no taste, are careless and indifferent, and go about with hay- 

 seed in our hair, and leave the stumps in our fields from sheer 

 ignorance. It is not so ; we do it from sheer poverty, for which 

 we are not to blame, in which we do not propose to remain, and 

 out of which we are slowly and surely working. We do appre- 

 ciate the fact that these things are a disfigurement to our farms, 

 but we cannot remove them to-day nor to morrow ; but the day 

 is coming, and it is not for distant, wlien farms are not to be dis- 

 figured with stumps and stone walls, and when they will present 

 a view to the passer-by that will be a credit to the taste of our 

 farmers, and though' our eyes for a time may be closed by the 

 pressure of poverty, as soon as we gain strength we mean to get 

 our eyes open. 



Another criticism. I think the gentleman who gave us the 

 statistics of fencing, in reckoning the rods of line fences took for 

 his illustration a farm of a hundred acres, and supposed the fences 

 to run entirely round it. The truth is bad enough, let us not 

 make the burden larger than it is. How many farms in the State 

 are all arrable land ? Isn't there a large wood lot not fenced ? 

 By reckoning the amount of fencing at five hundred rods don't we 

 make a statement greater than the facts will bear ? Now the 

 practical point in regard to the useless fences is, how can we get 

 rid of them ? I am glad to hear that the law requiring these 

 fences on the farm is all imagination ; and it seems to me that if 

 the Board could make this fact known to all the inhabitants of 

 the State it would do a work of incalculable value to the farmers. 

 Why, when the law of the State provided that cattle should not 

 run in the road you have no idea of the obliquy, I might say the 

 curses, that were heaped upon us who claimed that we were not 

 obliged by law to keep up our fences by the public highway. We 

 were held up as oppressors of the poor, who would take away 

 from the widow her last chance to pasture her cow ; but I am 

 happy to say we were successful. 



It is not only an expense to build and keep up these fences, to 

 break out the roads, and keep down the weeds they harbor, they 

 are not only a blot to the landscape and a disfigurement to the 

 farm, but they are useless, and we are under no obligation to 

 make them and keep them in being. We have no right to make 

 anything but pasture fences, because they are not only an expense 



