238 NEW ENGLAND FENCES 



quito, and for all we know compare the merits of 

 their owners and respective pastures. 



The fences of interval lands cannot be called 

 water fences, although during spring and fall 

 freshets they divide only wastes of water, across 

 which they show merely as streaks of gray, or, as 

 they are too apt to do, go drifting piecemeal down 

 stream with the strong current. Then the owners 

 go cruising over the flooded fields in quest of their 

 rails and boards, finding some stranded on shores 

 a long way from their proper place, some lodged 

 in the lower branches and crotches of trees and in 

 thickets of button-bushes, and some afloat, — 

 losing many that go to the gain of some riparian 

 freeholder further down the stream, but by the 

 same chance getting perhaps as many as they 

 lose. 



I have seen a very peculiar fence in the slate 

 region of Vermont, made of slabs of slate, set in 

 the earth like a continuous row of closely planted 

 headstones. It might give a nervous person a 

 shudder, as if the stones were waiting for him to 

 lie down in their lee for the final, inevitable sleep, 

 with nothing left to be done but the stone-cutter 

 to come and lie on the other side the fence. 



The least of fences, excepting the toy fences 

 that impound the make-believe herds of country 

 children, are the little pickets of slivers that 

 guard the melon and cucumber hiUs from the 



