4 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



no doubt, then necessary, not only to have the laws, but to enforce 

 them. Now all will claim that such laws are not needed upon the 

 statute books. We have so far advanced into a new order of 

 public opinion that no one is so wild as to believe that there are 

 any witches now, or ever were. Many other of the early New 

 England laws would now be quite as useless and uncalled for as the 

 laws against witchcraft. Public sentiment has been and is now 

 gradually changing, and we should not expect the customs and 

 usages of the past to govern and control the present. Farmers 

 are strongly inclined to retain old usages and follow practices 

 handed down from former generations. This is the case in regard 

 to fences and enclosures. We occupy farms which have been laid 

 out, divided and fenced by former owners. Those owners gained 

 their ideas of fencing and fences from the conditions by which they 

 were surrounded, or adopted those handed down from others. 



The ancient idea of a fen'ce was as a defence to garrison against 

 danger to person as well as to propertj'. Ilence the ancient cities 

 were walled — fenced — against the encroachments of enemies. In 

 Jeremiah we read : "And they shall eat up thine harvest, and 

 thy bread, which thy sons and thy daughters should eat : they 

 shall eat up thy flocks and thine herds : they shall eat up thy 

 vines and th}- fig trees : they shall impoverish thy fenced cities, 

 wherein thou trustedst with the sword." 



This idea of a fence was transported to America, and here 

 applied to the farms and their appurtenances where each farmer's 

 house was his castle. It ii true, surrounding circumstances from 

 time to time modified the idea as the surroundings of the settlers 

 changed, still the primitive idea of a fence as a defence was handed 

 down from generation to generation, even to the present time; 

 and now we find the farmers all over the State building and sup- 

 porting numerous costly lines of fences to defend their property 

 from the encroachments of their neighbor's stock. There is not 

 the shadow of a law, and never was, to compel them to do it; yet 

 the idea prevails and the custom corresponds with it. The party 

 of the second part accepting the custom which defends his stock 

 from damaging trespass upon his neighbor's property, trans- 

 gresses the spirit of the law by depending upon the neighbor's 

 fence to keep his stock out, while the law requires him to depend 

 upon his own to keep them in. We can all easily understand 

 how, in the early settlement of the country, these customs and 

 usages became established. The country was sparsely settled, 



