198 



BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Fences — Concluded. 



In his report for 1861, Secretary Flint of your own board 

 gives the cost of the then existing fences of Massachusetts 

 at $23,000,000, to which he adds the following estimate : 

 The interest at six per cent, on this sum would be $1,380,- 

 000. Add to this repairs annually, ten per cent, or 

 $2,300,000, and the cost of renewal at the end of twenty 

 years of one-half the fencing, we have the sum of $4,250,- 

 000 annually for fences, or $125 on each of the 34,000 

 farms of this Commonwealth. 



In 18G2 Hon. T. C. Peters, who had for some years been 

 engnged in the work of equalizing the landed properly of 

 that State, furnishes to the report of the New York State 

 Agricultural Society for that year some very solid fence 

 statistics. He gives the w^hole cost of the existing fences 

 at $144,000,000, with an annual charge of twenty-eight 

 millions to maintain them, the annual tax that the fences 

 occasion being $1.12^ per acre, or three times the amount 

 of the State tax. 



Pennsylvania had in 1850 one hundred and twenty-eight 

 thousand farms; the cost of fencing $150,600,000. Maine, 

 in the same year, forty-seven thousand farms, with a cost 



