48 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



are small, and are separated by fences, but not of unsightly posts 

 and rails. They are almost invariably of living hedge, usually 

 of hawthorn, neatly trimmed, and a very attractive feature of 

 the landscape. 



In our country, as the forests diminish, and timber becomes 

 more scarce and costly, we shall learn to dispense very largely 

 with fences which now so often disfigure our farms. The sup- 

 port of fences is an immense tax upon the owners of land, a 

 tax from which they will free themselves in time. As soon as 

 it is known in the community that cattle cannot roam at will, 

 that our domestic fowls must be restrained within the precincts 

 of their owners, the necessity of one-half the existing fences will 

 be done away. 



One must study farm life abroad chiefly to observe its con- 

 trasts with the same life here. The circumstances are so en- 

 tirely different that but few of the methods abroad would answer 

 with us. For instance, there is no country one visits more 

 interesting than Egypt. In no country is there such fertility 

 and such abundant crops as on the banks of the Nile. " Rich 

 as Nile mud," is a comparison I feel the force of as I did not 

 until I saw the Nile. But we could not introduce Egyptian 

 agriculture into New England. Let me speak of it very briefly. 

 No rain falls in Cairo, where I spent two weeks ; and yet the 

 country about there is the most fertile I ever saw. Its fertility 

 is wholly due to artificial irrigation. The Nile is everything to 

 the country. It is not strange it was esteemed a god and wor- 

 shipped by the Egyptians. Fed by melting snows and rains 

 hundreds of miles to the south, among the mountains, it flows 

 to the sea without a tributary. About the last of June its 

 waters begin to rise, and continue to increase till the middle of 

 September, when it is at its flood. 



At Cairo, its usual and desirable rise is twenty-two feet. It 

 varies from nineteen to twenty-four feet. If it does not rise over 

 nineteen feet, it is not sufficient to water the land ; the crops 

 fail, and famine ensues. If it rises over twenty-four feet, it 

 breaks down dikes, floods villages ^and towns, and makes a ter- 

 rible destruction. Both extremes have occurred several times 

 within a century. 



In an average season it flows over the whole valley eiglit or 

 ten miles wide on both sides of the river. The water is charged 



