98 THE YOUNG FARMER'S MANUAL. 



bottom board twice as wide as the top board. Sometimes the 

 bottom boards are from twelve to eighteen inches wide, and the 

 top boards of the same fence only four inches. There can be no 

 plausible reason whatever, to justify the use of such a wide 

 board for the bottom of a board fence. It cannot be argued that 

 greater strength is necessary near the bottom of a fence, for 

 the reverse of this is true. Swine and sheep do not. require as 

 strong a fence as horses and horned cattle ; consequently, if a 

 wide board is necessary, matters of taste and strength argue that 

 it should be placed at the top of the fence, where the greatest 

 resistance is needed. If a board four or five inches wide pos 

 sesses sufficient strength to turn horned cattle and horses, most 

 assuredly a board of that width is sufficiently strong to turn 

 swine and sheep. If, for instance, a board were fourteen inches 

 wide, and placed three inches from the ground, it would make 

 the fence seventeen inches high. Now, if that board were slit 

 into three boards of equal width, being about four and a half 

 inches wide, with the first board three inches above the ground, 

 and the first space three inches, and the second space four inches, 

 that same board would make a fence 3+4-^-|-44-4^ + 5-|-5-J= 

 26-^ inches high, and sufficiently strong to turn any kind of 

 domestic animals. Again, fence boards are often sawed twelve 

 or fourteen inches wide for the bottom board, the next nine inches 

 wide, the next eight, the next seven, the next, or top board, six 

 inches. The spaces often are two inches below the bottom board ; 

 first space two inches, second space three inches, third space four 

 inches, fourth space five inches, which will make a fence five feet 

 high. The boards used would be equal to a board forty -four 

 inches wide, with spaces amounting to sixteen inches wide. It 

 is granted that such a fence would be a strong and substantial 

 one ; but, if the boards were all of a uniform width, (four and a 

 half inches wide,) with wider spaces, but still sufficiently narrow 

 to stop pigs and lambs, a fence five feet high, and far more tasty, 

 in my estimation, could be made with six boards four and a half 

 inches wide, equal to a board twenty-seven inches in width, with 

 spaces three, four, five, six, seven, eight inches in width. But 



