WIRE 



who can afford to do so, the damage fund helping 

 to defray part of the cost. Hedge trimming 

 competitions are inaugurated, with prizes, to 

 encourage the making and keeping in repair of 

 permanent fences, thus making it worth while 

 for agricultural labourers to take an interest in 

 such work. The average farmer, although he 

 may not ride to hounds himself, is a sportsman 

 at heart, and he does not use wire because he 

 approves of it, but because skilled labour is often 

 difficult to secure. With regard to small holdings, 

 the owners of which are prone to fence their 

 ground with wire, these places are usually near 

 towns which provide a market for their produce, 

 and so they do not interfere with hunting to so 

 great an extent as large farms where wire is pre- 

 valent. 



Where financial difficulties will not allow of the 

 substitution of wooden fencing for wire, other 

 means must be resorted to, so that the presence 

 of wire can be detected by a rider, and possible 

 catastrophe averted. There are various ways of 

 doing this, such as forming jumping places with 

 posts and rails in a wire fence, erecting danger 

 boards, and marking trees. The trouble with a 

 jumping place is, that it consists of a short length 

 of rail, and as it is perhaps the only means of 

 exit from an enclosure, the members of the field 

 are obliged to race for it, thus increasing the 

 liability to accident, and the ground on both sides 

 of the rail becomes " poached" and soft. The 

 marking of trees is inadvisable because if wire 

 thus advertised is taken down, the marks are 

 difficult to obliterate, and in addition it opens a 

 way for people to mark more trees, rather than 

 go to the trouble of removing wire. Where wire 

 cannot be got down, it must of course be marked 



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