420 HANDY-BOOK OF HUSBANDRY. 



ter on " Fences," is a matter of great consequence ; for the large 

 amount of money, or what is equal to money — time and labor, 

 expended in building and repairing the interior fences of the farm, 

 is often appalling ; while the loss by reasoning of the shortening 

 of the plow furrow, and the ground occupied by the fence and 

 headland, and the excessive growth of noxious weeds on both sides 

 of the fence, are serious arguments in favor of any practice by 

 which fences may be entirely done away with or their extent 

 reduced. 



The econo7ni%ing of food is an economizing of the very elements 

 of all agricultural success, for the first object of all farming is the 

 production of food for men and animals; and it seems worse than 

 waste to have any valuable thing that the farm produces destroyed 

 without return. 



Quincy says, " There are six ways by which beasts destroy the 

 "article destined for their food, — ist. By eating ; id, By walk- 

 'Mng; 3d, By dunging; 4th, By staling; 5th, By lying down; 

 " 6th, By breathing on it. Of these six, the first only is useful. 

 " All the rest are wasteful. 



" By pasturing, the five last modes are exercised without any 

 " check or compensation. By keeping in the house, they may be 

 " all prevented totally by great care, and almost totally by very 

 " general and common attention." 



Of course, it is not to be inferred from this that animals avail 

 themselves of only one-fifth of the food produced by the field on 

 which they are pastured. But any farmer will at once admit that 

 the amount destroyed in the various ways referred to is very great ; 

 and it is probably even greater in rich pastures than in poor ones, 

 for the reason that after an animal has once filled itself it seems to 

 devote a large part of the remaining hours of the day to the 

 destruction of luxuriant food for which it has no immediate use. 

 Whether the amount wasted is small or great, the waste may be 

 almost entirely prevented by cutting and hauling to some other 

 place than the surface of the field on which the crop grows. In 

 soiling, especially in stalls, the amount of food administered may 

 be exactly adjusted to the needs of the animals. They may 



