218 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



trust farmers with whom wood is abundant, and big 

 stones superabundant, will give this simple device a 

 trial. Powder and drilling cost money, part of which 

 may be saved by this expedient. 



I have built some stone walls at first, not very 

 well ; but for the last ten years my rule has been : 

 Yery little fence on a farm, but that little of a kind 

 that asks no forbearance of the wildest bull that ever 

 wore a horn. The last wall I built cost me at least 

 $5 per rod ; and it is worth the money. Beginning 

 by plowing its bed and turning the two furrows to- 

 gether, so as to raise the ground a foot, and make a 

 shallow ditch on either side, I built a wall thereon 

 which will outlast my younger child. An ordinary 

 wall dividing a wood on the north from an open field 

 of sunny, gravelly loam on the south, would have been 

 partly thrown down and wholly twisted out of shape 

 in a few years, by the thawing of the earth under its 

 sunny side, while it remained firm as a rock on the 

 north ; but the ground is always dry under my entire 

 wall ; so nothing freezes there, and there is conse- 

 quently nothing to thaw and let down my wall. I 

 shall be sorely disappointed if that wall does not out- 

 last my memory, and be known as a thorough barrier 

 to roving cattle long after the name of its original 

 owner shall have been forgotten. 



