106 THE MASSACHUSETTS SOCIETY 



declared them to be worse than useless. He urged that 

 pasture land should be separated by a sufficient fence 

 from the cultivated land, and that the condition of the 

 separated areas should be a permanent one; that no 

 beasts should be permitted to range upon the soil 

 destined for the plough and the scythe; that nothing 

 is gained by pasturing mowing-land, because any ap- 

 parent gain is offset by the labor, cost of building and 

 keeping in repair interior fences, by loss of time in 

 ploughing through frequent turning about of the team, 

 and loss of crops at the "head-lands," where barberry 

 bushes, nettles and injurious weeds grow, and field 

 mice, wood-chucks, skunks, and squirrels inhabit; that 

 surplus stones may be disposed of by thickening the 

 outer walls, or by building them into pyramids and 

 covering them with grape vines; and that, while pas- 

 ture land may profitably be divided by interior walls, 

 arable land, though it were a hundred acres, should be 

 in one lot, for then the plough runs clear in a long 

 furrow. 



Upon the topic of building farm houses he said: 



"The fault is not peculiar to farmers — it is true of 

 men in almost every rank and condition of life — that 

 when about to build they often exceed their means, 

 and almost always go beyond the real wants of their 

 families, and the actual requisition of their other rela- 

 tions in hfe. But let not the sound, practical good 

 sense of the country be misled by the false taste and 

 false pride of the city, where wealth, fermenting by 

 reason of the greatness of its heaps, is ever fuming 

 away in palaces, the objects of present transitory 

 pride, and too often of future long-continued repent- 

 ance. 



Now what do we sometimes see in the country? 

 Why, a thriving farmer, touched with this false taste. 



