96 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



Nearly allied to this thoroug-hnessy thus displayed in careful 

 culture and finished roads, is that stability and permanence 

 which is shown in all structures, from the cart-house, cattle- 

 steadings, barns and outbuildings, to the farm-house, dwelling 

 and })alace, in town and country alike. All are built of stone, 

 with partition walls of stone or bricks. I do not remember 

 seeing a building erected of wood throughout England and 

 Scotland, and nowhere on the Continent, except perhaps the 

 roof frames of the poorest cow-houses in Switzerland. But I 

 do not intend to detain you on this topic. 



The next great lesson which I think an American farmer 

 may learn from the experience of the past, which is taught by 

 the old countries, is the necessity and economy of dispensing 

 almost entirely with fences on the farm, and in the open coun- 

 try. It has been estimated that more than half a million dol- 

 lars is annually expended in Massachusetts alone in the erec- 

 tion and repair of unnecessary, perishable, wooden fences ; and 

 habit leads us to believe that we cannot dispense with them. 

 In no purely agricultural district which I have visited on the 

 Continent is a fence to be seen. Look along the highways of 

 France and Belgium, go with me down the open valley of the 

 Rhine from Basle to Strasbourg, from Strasbourg to Heidelberg 

 and Frankfort, take the railway through the plains of Bavaria 

 to Augsburg and Munich ; extend your survey from Vienna 

 across the plains of Eastern Germany to Berlin ; see the long 

 narrow lands, each one a farm by itself, devoted to separate 

 culture. You see no dividing barriers, except a stone post set 

 low in the ground, and no hedge, fence or wall along the high- 

 ways. The milch cattle are fed in the stalls ; the young stock 

 are in the mountains. A pair of milch cows in the field are 

 earning their own living, and saving the labor of the horses, by 

 conveying green fodder to the barn. A woman is cutting the 

 fodder and loading the cart. (I do not ask you to follow her 

 example in this country.) The law of the country, or a custom 

 more binding than law, forbids cattle-grazing on these fields. 

 Here and there is a flock of sheep nibbling stubble, on a strip a 

 hundred feet in width, with grain securely ripening on one side 

 and a neighbor's beets on the other, the land separated by open 

 furrows. A shepherd's dog circles around them and keeps them 

 at home, whilst a boy carelessly loiters in the neighborhood, and 



