118 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



1885. 



Milk, $10,312,762 



Butter, including creamery, 2,611,351 



Cheese, including factory, 99,478 



('ream, 202,700 



$13,226,297 



The cows and heifers of 1865 numbered, .... 174,386 



The cows and heifers of 1885 numbered, .... 198,997 



Fences. 



I have no doubt that imperfect fencing had a considerable 

 part in discouraging farmers who were keeping sheep. Many- 

 fences, only enough of which are left to make division lines, 

 were built long years ago. The life of a Virginia rail fence 

 is about sixty years ; to a stone wall there is no limit of 

 duration, but there is to its ability to turn sheep. A rail 

 fence becomes at last broken and rotten in spots, and must 

 be repaired, sometimes by lopping down a small tree, some- 

 times by putting in a rotten rail or a couple of insufficient 

 stakes. The stone wall, always a "balance wall," has been 

 rudely laid a hundred years more or less by the unskilled 

 hands of the farmer and his hired man ; year after year it has 

 settled, and the top stones have tumbled down, especially 

 on a side hill, aided by long years of storm and by careless 

 hunters and boys. Where the stones have fallen so as to 

 make a set of convenient steps, the sheep will cheerfully 

 walk over, or will crawl through any hole or gap in a fence. 

 Early in the spring the farmer, anno3^ed at the continual 

 excursions of his sheep the preceding season, starts out with 

 his boys to mend his fences ; a long, cold, wearisome job it 

 is, and usually done in the most slouching and perfunctory 

 manner. A few years of this, and he begins to agree with 

 the boys that cows are easier kept. 



Recently barbed w T ire has come to our relief, and a single 

 strand stretched on posts or stakes above the top of the wall 

 makes it pretty secure, while a fence of four or five strands is 

 cheap ; will restrain the sheep, and protect them from dogs. 



Tariff. 



Tariff is a dreadful-sounding word, and causes as much 

 dismay and terror now as it did when borne by that piratical 

 old Arab cut-throat Tarif Ibn malek al-ma-feri, who, taking 



