GENTLEMEN ADVENTURERS 37 



ing had not left them quite indifferent to the possibili- 

 ties of everything else. Figs, lemons, almonds, pome- 

 granates, olives, ginger, sugar-cane, plantains and 

 cassada or prickly pear are named as subjects of this 

 testing; the first mentioned were an immediate success, 

 evidently, for the garden of Mrs. Pierce at Jamestown, 

 although only three or four acres in extent, yielded 

 a hundred bushels in one year, not so many years 

 later. 



A legal provision regarding the enclosure of land, 

 adopted by the General Court in 1626, would seem to 

 indicate that some of the grantees of the vast areas 

 privately acquired, had undertaken to be exclusive with 

 regard to their holdings. This provision stipulates 

 that only those fields wherein crops grow, may be en- 

 closed "with fence"; the rest, it declares, must be left 

 as a range for cattle. And the instructions to Gov. 

 Berkeley in 1641 provided that every colonist holding 

 one hundred acres of land should establish a garden 

 and orchard, carefully protected by a fence, ditch or 

 hedge. Berkeley himself had fifteen hundred apple, 

 peach, apricot, quince and other fruit trees, which must 

 have been so protected. 



The fence probably most commonly used, is charac- 

 teristic to-day of many parts of Virginia the pictur- 

 esque "rail fence," most easily constructed and most 

 readily taken down and moved to another place, when 



