L344 
Colonel Pickering, on Hedges. 
Read June 13th, 1809. 
Washington, June \st, 1809. 
Dear Sir, 
In a letter which I put into the mail yesterday, I asked 
you some questions, and made some requests and ob- 
servations, which occurred on the perusal of the Me- 
moirs of the Philadelphia Society of Agriculture: but I 
believe I omitted to speak of dive hedges. 
When I dwelt at Wyoming, and saw the havoc of 
fences by freshes in the Susquehannah, the importance 
of live fences struck me forcibly ; and had I continued 
there, should doubtless have commenced their introduc- 
tioi. When in 1800 I went into the back parts of the 
state, away from bottom land, ! thought of your hem- 
lock hedge, of which you have given me the history, 
substantially, as now recited in the memoirs. It appear- 
ed to be a perfect fence, easily formed, and with this 
advantage, that (as I supposed) no domestic animal 
would brouse it. In this view I mentioned it to some 
settlers in that quarter. But they told me that sheep 
would eat hemlock. Cattle also, I now know, will taste 
it. But so they (sheep particularly) will eat the thorn; on 
which when young and in hedges, if accessible to sheep, 
they commit such depredations, that Lord Kaims says he 
could hardly refrain from murmuring against Provi- 
dence. 
More than twenty years ago I read Anderson’s Es- 
says on Agriculture, and I well remember his princi- 
