NEW ENGLAND FENCES 225 



patch of the earth face to face with the sun, and 

 had sown their scanty seed therein, fenced it about 

 with poles, a flimsy-looking barricade in the 

 shadow of the lofty palisade of ancient trees that 

 walled the "betterments," but sufficient to keep 

 the few wood-ranging cattle out of the field whose 

 green of springing grain was dotted and blotched 

 with blackened stumps and log-heaps. The pole 

 fence was laid after the same fashion of a rail fence, 

 only the poles were longer than rail-cuts. There 

 were also cross-staked pole fences, in which the 

 fence was laid straight, each pole being upheld by 

 two stakes crossing the one beneath, their lower 

 ends being driven into the ground. This and the 

 brush fence, though the earliest of our fences, have 

 not yet passed away. That the last has not, one 

 may find to his sorrow, when, coming to its length- 

 wise-laid abatis in the woodland, he attempts to 

 cross it. If he achieve it with a whole skin and un- 

 rent garments, he is a fortunate man, and if with 

 an unruffled temper, he is certainly a good-natured 

 one. According to an unwritten law, it is said that 

 a lawful brush fence must be a rod wide, with no 

 specification as to its height. You will think a less 

 width enough, when you have made the passage of 

 one. Coming to it, you are likely to start from its 

 shelter a hare who has made his form there; or a 

 ruffed grouse hurtles away from beside it, where 

 she has been dusting her feathers in the powdery 



