208 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



the potatoes in the hill with the usual quantity — some eight or 

 nine cart loads — of good manure to the acre. On the adjoin- 

 ing part I applied guano in the hill, at the rate of about 200 

 lbs. to the acre. The result was that the land on which guano 

 was used, inithont manure, produced as vigorous growth of tops 

 and as many potatoes as the adjoining land, on wliich nine or 

 ten cart loads of manure to tlie acre was used ; thus demon- 

 strating the fact that guano is as valuable for potatoes as for 

 other crops. 



WIRE FENCES. 



ESSEX. 



Communication of William H. Brewster. 



It is an old maxim that " experience is the best schoolmaster," 

 and it is only by practical experience that we have acquired and 

 adopted the course of agricultural improvements for which the 

 present age is distinguished. In those parts of our country 

 where the material for stone fences is abundant, the reasons for 

 constructing wire fences may not apply with all their force ; 

 but where no rocks are to be found conveniently at hand, the 

 construction of these fences will be true economy. They con- 

 sume much less labor and stock, and can be built at less than 

 half the cost of a board fence of similar durability. 



About ten years since the writer observed in one of the agri- 

 cultural publications of the day an intimation respecting the 

 utility of wire fences, and having occasion to construct a 

 division fence at that time, concluded to make an experiment 

 with wire. For this purpose we selected No. 9 size, and pro- 

 cured two hundred pounds, which cost six dollars per hundred 

 — the price now, however, has advanced 25 per cent. Cedar 

 posts, about six inches in diameter, were set firmly in the 

 ground, sixty feet apart — in the intervals between these posts a 

 cedar stake, from two to tln-ee inches in diameter, was driven 

 into the ground, at equal distances, every twelve feet. This 



