764 



FARMERS' REGISTER— FENCES—HARNESSING. 



half the amount. Now, would it not be cheai)er 

 f()r any man to keep up hi.-? stock, his hogs at 

 least? Without doubt: and particularly the poor 

 man, if (he rich man's stock was kept from run- 

 ning at large, I could go, sir, into a detailed cal- 

 culation, and shoAv beyond all question, that it 

 would be the best way. Suppose, sir, a petUion 

 was to come, for the sake oi' uniformity, through 

 the Farmers' Register, to the Virginia Assembly, 

 upon the subjectl I promise you" to circulate it in 

 my county. " The people who Ihinic that they have 

 wood in plenty, might object; but Middle Virgi- 

 nia, I know must, and would willingly join in the 

 demand. But this is the place to make the be- 

 ginning. If we wish to break the force of preju- 

 dices and old habits, let us begin Avhere there will 

 be most opposition, and as we go on, we shall 

 gather strength ten-fold. I do not, sir, despair, 

 lor I am proud to tell you that we have some zeal- 

 ous men in the cause of farming, and though they 

 may be ridiculed, they still persevere; and some 

 of them, sir, have authorised me to invite you to 

 examine, in person, our lands, marls, &c. &c., and 

 to stimulate them still more in the good cause. 

 To show you that I have long been opposed to our 

 fence policy, I send you some pieces which I cut 

 out of the Whig as far back as the winter 1830- 

 '31, in which this subject is discussed. 



Will you be so good as to publish, if you can 

 obtain them, the laws relating to fences in Penn- 

 .sylvania and New Jersey? Will you also publish, 

 from your own recollection, or obtain ii'om the 

 New Jersey lamier, now on James river, (refer- 

 red to in your lOtli No.) a particular description of 

 his hog sties, and manner of keeping hogs, from 

 the pigging to the killiiig, and at what age he 

 generally kills his hogs, and the weight of them? 



ANTI-FEXCE. 



7th April, 1834. 



From tlic Richmond Wliig, of 1831. 



To Messrs Hives of Campbell, 3 f orris of Hanover, 

 and Miller of Powhatan. 



Gentlemen: — I observe in the proceedings of the 

 Legislature, that a resolution has been adopted, 

 "instructing the Committee of Agriculture, to en- 

 quire whether any, and if any, what measures are 

 necessary, to promote the agricultural interests of 

 this commonwealth; and the committee have 

 leave to report by bill or othcnvise." 



Permit me, gentlemen, to implore you to use 

 your best influence, and all your talents, to procure 

 the insertion of a clause in the contemplated bill, 

 to compel eveiy owner of stock, to confine his hor- 

 ses, cows, hogs, and sheep, upon his own lands, 

 either by small or large enclosures,as may suit his 

 inclinations : — ^but let the penalty lor faihng to do 

 so, be either a forfeiture of the stock, or the value 

 thereof — at any rates,after the second offence. This 

 will " promote the cause of agriculture," and the 

 improvement of our lands, more than any other 

 thing the Legislature can devise, if they were to 

 continue in session six years, instead of six months. 

 I pray you to reflect upon the subject — bring to 

 your recollections, the circumstances whiclr have, 

 within the last twenty years, produced contentions 

 and hatred, quarreling and figliting, in your neigh- 

 borhoods, and you will find, i verily believe, that 

 the depredations of stock, lie at the foundation of 



five-sixths of those disagreements. What is 80 

 well calculated to make a man hate hie neighbor, 

 as to lie in his bed at night and reflect that his 

 neighbor's stock may at that moment be destroy- 

 ing the crop lor which he has been toiling nine 

 months of the year? — and how often tlo we rise 

 of a morning and find our fears of such destruction 

 realized by the fact ? I need not tell you,, gentle- 

 men, that such a law would be beneficial to the 

 poor — you must know it, il" you have ever given 

 one hour's attention to the subject — and if you 

 never have, I pray you now to do it. I verily be- 

 lieve such a law would reduce the poor rates to 

 almost nothing in less than ten years — and that 

 there would not be a man or woman in the state, 

 who would not, in the end, applaud your efforts 

 upon this all important matter — for, rest assured, 

 without such a law, extending its provisions Irom 

 the Blue Ridge of mountains to the eastern bounda- 

 ry of the state, or at least to the head of tide water, 

 middle Virginia will become a poor despised coun- 

 try' — all your rail roads, sluce navigation, and canal 

 schemes to the contrary notwithstanding. Such 

 a law is worth them all. It is the enclosing sys- 

 tem (so much insisted on by all modern writers on 

 agriculture) upon the largest scale; and what is 

 still more desirable, its benefits will be general; and 

 we shall obtain that benefit by a vast saving of 

 money and labor. Col. Taylor, some twenty years 

 ago, calculated the expense of cuttuig down tim- 

 ber, mauling it into rails, and putting upon dead 

 fences, as equal, on a very large farm, to one-tenth 

 of all the labor bestowed upon the cultivation of 

 that farm. If it is true in relation to a large farm, 

 it is doubly so upon a small one, as every arith- 

 metician knows it only requires double the number 

 of rails to enclose four acres of land, that it requires 

 to enclose one acre — consequently, the small iarm- 

 er is at twice as much expense as the farmer who 

 has double the quantity of land — I mean double 

 the expense, in proportion to the quantity of land 

 cultivated and enclosed. pkteu stoner. 



THE IMPORTANCE OF A PROPER MODE OP 



HARNESSING WORK HORSES. 



Translated for the Farmers' Register, from the Journal d' Agri- 

 culture etc, des Pays-Bos. 



Wc were struck, on an-iving in France, at the 

 difference which exists between two places, in the 

 number of horses employed to draw a plough. 

 But in observing these different methods, it was 

 easy to perceive, that to an ill combined system of 

 harnessing the horses, at least as much as to the 

 faulty form ol" the ploughs, should be attributed a 

 great loss of force, and, consequenth^, the necessi- 

 ty of employing a greater number of horses. It 

 is established irom the exact observations of M. 

 Cordier, that the quantity of work performed by a 

 single horse in Flanders equals the ordinaiy labor 

 of six horses in the interior of France. It Avould 

 then be useful to all persons whose situation obliges 

 them to vise these animals, to point out the causes 

 of this enormous difference; causes which M. Cor- 

 dier has not been able to state, because they are 

 so peculiar as to escape even the best informed 

 persons, who have not made them a particular 

 study, or who have not, by their condition, an ha- 

 bitual acquaintance with them. 



In the manner of harHcsshig hoi'sce in Franc^e, 

 the traces arc in an exactly horizontal din;ctton. 



