FENCES AND FEXCING. 5 



the people were poor, communication from town to town and 

 between individuals was difficult, and the inhabitants were more 

 dependent upon each other than is the case at the present time. 

 Hence grew up a sort of mutual consent that each should protect 

 his own crops. The stock was allowed to run at large in the 

 highwaj's, and this necessitated the building and maintenance of 

 road fences. 



It is quite probable that the custom of impaling the garden and 

 cribbing the front yard, handed down to the present time and still 

 by many rigidly adhered to, originated from the necessity of 

 defence from roving stock. So fully established was the custom 

 of making public pasturage ground of the highways that it was 

 adhered to down to a recent date. It was but a few years ago 

 that towns decided by vote, at their annual meeting, whether 

 cattle should run at large or not, and it was still later before the 

 fact was generally received that the rights of the public to the 

 road were limited to its use as a highway for travel. Had this 

 enlightened view been entertained by the early settlers it would 

 have saved to productive industry a vast outlay of labor. 



In looking over the division fences of our farms a man of taste 

 and judgment is seriously puzzled to know what ideas of arrange- 

 ment were entertained by the former proprietors. Large and 

 otherwise unobstructed fields are cut up into small enclosures 

 by tumble-down stone walls, to the modern farmer of no earthly 

 use, and serving only as unsightly obstructions to profitable til- 

 lage. Field boundaries are crooked and irregular apparently for 

 no other reason than to try the skill of the plowman in turning 

 crooked furrows, or the skill of the teamster in driving the mowing 

 machine. These are conditions which have been handed down to 

 us from a less enlightened age, and are allowed to remain to dis- 

 figure the landscape and embarrass the operations of the farm — 

 are endured without apparent effort at removal, solely from that 

 indifference to taste, neatness and good order which may too 

 frequently be chargeable to the farmer. The early settlers gave 

 their attention to the removal of the stately forests. To this their 

 chief energies were necessarily directed. The forests were the 

 great incumbrance, and eo closely were they absorbed in their 

 removal that little time was given to a cultivation of the beautiful ; 

 and even the useful and convenient were by many sadly neglected. 

 The fences were generally constructed of logs from the f(;lled 

 trees, and were built where it could be done the easiest, without 



