30 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



demands that the highway should be given to the poor for a public pasture. 

 Having had ample opportunity to study the practical working of the road 

 pasture, I concluded that if the time spent by hunting up their cattle, by some 

 familes, were put into some kind of lionest labor, it would pay for pasture. 



If there are families who cannot live without keeping a cow in the road let 

 them be helped by private enterprise, or by the town authorities. I fail to ap- 

 preciate the pride that will not permit a man to ask for, or receive aid in this 

 way for his family, but who would keep a cow in the public road and compel a 

 wliole neighborhood to keep up expensive highway fences, and not allow the 

 planting of shade trees, and render every man liable to loss if a gate should 

 happen to be left unlatched, not only by destroying crops, but fruit, and orna- 

 mental trees, that may have required years of attention. I have seen the im- 

 provement and ornamentation and consequent increase in value of a whole 

 neighborhood, prevented, where it was the common desire, just to allow a few 

 families to keep their miserable cows in the road, a nuisance to every one. It 

 is safe to say that every cow running in the street in well settled portions of the 

 state will destroy every year five times enough to pay for her keeping. 



HEDGES. 



In speaking of hedges, I refer merely to the hedge as a fence. Will it pay 

 to plant hedges for this purpose in Michigan? Nurserymen and tree agents 

 are making quite an effort to induce the honest Michigan granger to invest in 

 hedge plants. They depict in glowing colors the fence of living green, ^' a 

 thing of beauty and joy forever," horse high, bull strong, and pig tight. 

 ZSiotwithstanding the "agent" has done much to build up tlie farming com- 

 munity, a farmer might do worse than to adopt the following rule and live up 

 to it: 



Never buy anything of any traveling agent. 



I have seen beautiful hedges as dense and solid in appearance as a stone wall, 

 iis straight as an arrow — every line perfect, in pictures in the agent's book, 

 representing how the various plants they sell should look in four or five years 

 after planting, and have also seen hedge fences jDatched up with rails, and 

 stumps, and stones — a protection against nothing — on the ground, showing 

 just how they do look in four or five years after planting. Hedges for fencing, 

 and belts of shrubs or trees for wind breaks, are not to be confounded. It 

 may be advisable, and prove profitable and certainly ornamental, to plant 

 occasional belts or clumps of trees wherever there are open spaces extending 

 over one mile in each direction, as a protection against sweeping winds. 



In regard to ornamental hedges for parks or gardens, cost is not considered, 

 and although they may be used as barriers or boundaries, and add greatly to 

 the attractions of the rural residence, and pay the owner, by adding to his 

 comforts and the satisfaction of having a beautiful home, they are not farm 

 fences,and we will not consider them included in our subject. 



AVe wish to discuss this question and weigh it in the same balance in which 

 nine-tenths of us weigh almost everything else; sometimes even men. I 

 would place in the balance against it the " almighty dollar," and the one great 

 question would be, which would the descending dollar raise the most of, taking 

 everything into consideration, hedge or fence? 



I have been looking over the files of several agricultural papers to see if I 

 could find any comparison of the cost and utility of the two, but did not get 

 much information. In the eighth volume of Rural Affairs is a well written 

 article by C. G. Taylor of Galesburgh, 111., in which he recommends Osage 



