Book IV. FENCES USED IN AGRICULTURE. 473 



washing turnips (10), a bull-house (11), cattle-sheds ( 1 2), a gangway from the straw- 

 room (1:3), straw-room (14), threshing-machine (15), clean corn room (16), unthreshed 

 corn (17), horse-track (18), loose box (19), chaff and hay room (20), stable for six 

 horses (21), harness-room (22), another stable for six horses (23), saddle-room (24). In 

 the open area are, the horse court-yard (25), three fold-yards (26), the stable-court (27), 

 two cisterns for the fold-yard (28), four hogs'-courts, with feeding cisterns (29), and two 

 tanks for hogwash (30). " On the east side of this design is supposed to be a road, 

 from which there is an entrance to a garden in the front of the house ; and from this 

 road a gate is also supposed to open into the rick-yard, which is at the back of the cattle- 

 shed, and north end of the barn ; through this, to the houses on the west side, pass the 

 carts with turnips and other provender for the cattle." 



Chap. IV. 

 Fences used in Agriculture. 



2960. Fences, next to implements, machinery, and suitable buildings, are in most 

 situations " indispensable to the profitable management of arable land. Thev are not 

 only necessary to protect the crops from the live stock of the farm, but often contribute, 

 in no small degree, by the shelter they afford, to augment and improve the produce 

 itself. On all arable farms, on which cattle and sheep are pastured, the ease, security, 

 and comfort, which good fences give, both to the owner and the animals themselves, are 

 too evident to require particular notice. And as there are few tracts so rich as to admit 

 of crops being carried off the land for a succession of years, without the intervention of 

 green crops consumed where they grow, fences, of some description or other, can very 

 rarely be dispensed with, even in the most fertile and highly improved districts." The 

 same able author complains of the general mismanagement of this branch of husbandry, 

 by which means fences not only often become comparatively useless, but even injurious 

 by the space they occupy and the weeds they shelter. This, he says, " is particularly 

 the case with thorn hedges, which are too often planted in soils where they can never, by 

 any management, be expected to become a sufficient fence ; and which, even when planted 

 on suitable soils, are in many cases so much neglected when young, as ever afterwards 

 to be a nuisance, instead of being an ornamental, permanent, and impenetrable barrier, 

 which with proper training they might have formed in a few years." (Sup. Encyc. 

 Brit. art. Agr. ) Fences may be considered in regard to their emplacement or situation, 

 and their form or kind. 



Sect. I. Situation or Emplacement of Fences. 



2961. The emplacement or disposition offences on a farm or an estate will depend on 

 the purposes for which they are made. In laying out an estate, their disposition will 

 depend on the natural surface and situation of roads ; water- courses ; on the lands to be 

 planted with trees ; and on a variety of other considerations which will come under 

 review in the succeeding part of this work. The situation of fences on a farm depends 

 on a great variety of circumstances, as the extent of the farm ; its climate ; whether 

 pasture, arable, or mixed; on the inequalities of the surface; on the nature of the soil; 

 on the supply of water ; and on the course of husbandry to be followed. 



2962. In determining the subdivisions of an arable farm, the excellent author above 

 quoted observes, " whatever may be the kind of fence which it is thought advisable to 

 adopt, we would recommend that particular attention be paid to the course of crops 

 which the quality of the soil points out as the most advantageous; and that upon all 

 farms, not below a medium size, there should be twice the number of enclosures that 

 there are divisions or breaks in the course. Thus, if a six years' rotation be thought the 

 most profitable, there should be twelve enclosures, two of which are always under the 

 same crop. One very obvious advantage in this arrangement is, that it tends greatly to 

 equalise labour, and, with a little attention, may contribute much to equalise the produce 

 also. On large farms, where all the land under turnips and clover, for instance, is near 

 the extremity of the grounds, or at a considerable distance from the buildings, supposed 

 to be set down near the centre, it is clear that the labour of supplying the house and 

 straw-yard stock with these crops, as well as the carriage of the manure to the field, is 

 much greater than if the fields were so arranged as that the half of eacli of these crops 

 should be nearer the offices : but by means of two fields for each crop in the rotation, it 

 is quite easy to connect together one field near the houses with another at a distance, and 

 thus to have a supply at hand for the home stock, while the distant crops may be 

 consumed on the ground. The sa)ne equalisation of labour must be perceived in the 

 cultivation of the corn-fields, and in harvesting the crops. The time lost in travelling to 

 some of the fields, when working by the plough, is of itself a matter of some consequence 



