268 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



required when making an entry to sign an affidavit as to who was the grower of 

 the productions he proposes to exhibit. E. M. P. 



Kalamazoo. 



SHALL STOCK BE ALLOWED TO RUN IN OUR HIGHWAYS? 



It seems to me that there are no men more interested in this question than 

 the horticulturists, and the full discussion of it is perfectly proper by them. 

 When this State was younger than it is to-day, with very little cleared and 

 tillable land, but instead a large amount open to ^' the commons," little objec- 

 tion could be made if parties did own more stock than they could keep within 

 their enclosures and chose to take the chances of finding them when once 

 turned into the highway. So common was this practice in an early day that 

 people came to believe the custom had made the law, and by the divine right 

 of citizenship to any settler the highways of tlie land as well as those tracts 

 unfenced were public property to be used in common for any purpose whatever. 



By a gradual progress farms have been cleared and fenced, but very little 

 attention, however, has been paid, to the necessity or beauty of shade trees 

 along the highways. But instead, the general belief that each land owner was 

 obliged to build and maintain a "good, lawful fence" on the roads on the line 

 of or running through his farm made it appear that he ought to suffer the loss 

 of his crops and shade trees if he should dare to presume to let his fence get 

 low or the bars down. But the world moves and customs change, and for the 

 last few years our wise men who assemble biennially at Lansing have been 

 trying to make laws to regulate and govern the matter, but to-day we find no 

 law that will practically settle the vexed question ; and more, I believe we 

 never will for it is a matter that needs no law more than that which our con- 

 stitution guarantees to every owner of laud in the State. The constitution 

 allows of no law that will tax one man for the benefit of another as an indi- 

 vidual. The government deeds the individual a certain number of acres and 

 guarantees to him all the rights and privileges therein, reserving only the 

 power of laying along his boundary line or through his land highways, or what 

 may better be called "public ways." Notice now that nowhere in any 

 act whatever is there any such term as public pasture, but "highway" is the 

 term meaning a passageway for the public. Free and unrestrained is any per- 

 son who chooses to peaceably pass, but he has no law, nor can there be any law 

 enacted or enforced that allows him any other privilege than that of passage. 

 The owner of the land is required by the State to furnish the land for the road 

 and he is taxed every year on that with the rest of his farm. Not a tree or 

 shrub or anything else that grows or is found there can be used or converted to 

 the use of any private citizen other than he who owns it. Any tree or grass 

 growing on the highway is as much the property of the owner of the land as 

 though it were inside his enclosure, and any other person appropriating it to 

 any other purpose than to benefit or repair the passageway — and that officially 

 — is a trespasser in the full meaning of the term. 



It seems to me that when this can be fully understood there need be no more 

 trouble. Stock found grazing in the highway, with no escort or person to 

 drive it along, is trespassing, and should be at once shut up and the owner 

 made to pay for all trouble before he can take it. 



Millions of dollars are expended annually in our State alone for no other 



