276 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



lish, as you have done, a system which must multiply tenfold 

 the production of meat ; sweat blood and water to cheapen the 

 means 'of living ; it is all nonsense as compared with the noble 

 sport of the chase ; and yet here we are in the nineteenth 

 century. 



" Your position is such that you can make yourself heard at 

 head-quarters ; we have only one chance of safety, and that is, 

 to demand the repeal of the law of 1844, which places the 

 farmer at the mercy of game and sportsmen. 



" The game has in four years devoured no less than $12,000 . 

 worth of my crops. I went to law for damages and got my 

 case, and 'for one year's loss received $2,000, about half the 

 loss ; but I find going to law a bad business for a farmer, who 

 has to neglect his work to tend to it, and I have come to the 

 heroic determination to fence off 250 acres with close paling 

 and lay the rest down to permanent grass, which will suffer 

 less from the teeth of game. Now it requires a man from 

 October to May to guard and take care of my five miles of 

 fence, and to stop the gaps the rabbits make either by gnawing 

 or burrowing under it. You see, therefore, that I have not 

 got" the rabbits down, as you seem to think, but have been 

 driven to guard myself against them at an enormous cost ; but 

 I congratulate myself more and more every day at having 

 adopted this means of defence." 



In travelling in the railway, scarcely a field is passed without 

 seeing more or less of these pests of the farm scampering off 

 at the shrill sound of the engine-whistle. 



There was not much except the facilities for water carriage, 

 to offset these great drawbacks. The landlord, however, under- 

 took to furnish money for roads, drains, &c., with a charge of 

 six per cent, on the outlay to the amount of $6,000. The 

 Canal de I'Ourcq, which cuts through the farm in a bed nine 

 yards below the level, was built by the first empire, and the 

 requirements of this canal led to the drainage of the property, 

 which in winter had been a complete swamp. Then, in 1852, 

 the Eastern railway came within six miles, and now a station 

 exists only 4i miles off, on that line, though judging from the 

 time it took to travel it in the lumbering diligence the governor 

 felt quite sure it was ten. In 1860 another line built a station 

 at only two miles, so that the facilities of access are tolerable. 



