68 The Farmstead 



the deed ; all of which might be overlooked by 

 the ordinary business man, and yet be readily 

 detected by a lawyer. 



Some day the farmer may be annoyed by 

 the encroachment of a neighbor upon his farm, 

 and, when in the midst of a litigation, find that 

 the description of his farm is so defective that 

 there is no relief. I have in my possession a 

 deed of a valuable farm containing this descrip- 

 tion : '' Beginning on the road at the 



south end of a pile of four -foot wood ; run- 

 ning thence westwardly to a black cherry tree, 

 thence northerly to a stake, thence easterly to 

 a pine stum23 in the center of the road, and 

 thence southerly to the 23lace of beginning, con- 

 taining 100 acres, more or less." For fifty 

 years this description has been copied, a score 

 of times, by the various justices of the peace 

 and notaries public of the neighboring hamlet, 

 but fortunately, however, it has never devolved 

 upon the owners to establish the boundaries of 

 that farm. The first lawyer who got hold of 

 this particular deed insisted upon such a de- 

 scription as would be tangible and certain. 

 Not many years ago a mortgage on a valuabh' 

 farm in Tompkins county, N. Y., was fore- 

 closed, and during the foreclosure it was dis- 

 covered that this mortgage covered about fifty 

 acres of Cayuga lake, and what had been sup- 



