BAEB WIRE FENCES. 199 



of twenty-five millions for fencing, the repairs calling for 

 $2,500,000 annually. The Kentucky State Agricultural 

 Report for 1878 declares that the one hundred and twenty- 

 five thousand farms of that State average six hundred rods 

 of fencing to each ftu'm, an aggregate outlay of $75,000,000. 



The Iowa Agricultural Report for 1803 contains a re- 

 markable statement of the cost of fences, which declares 

 that even in States where timber for fencing abounds, so 

 much so that it is an object to get it ofi' the land, the cost 

 of fencing their lands exceeds the cost of the buildings 

 required for the comfort of the inhabitants, making even 

 more striking the computation for Iowa, where more than 

 three-fourths of the land is entirely destitute of timber. 

 The cost of the fences of Iowa was given in the United 

 States Agricultural Report of 1871 at $34,729,338. 



We might continue these exhibits, but enough has been 

 presented to declare that the fence question has a meaning 

 broadly and strongly applied to our American farming, and 

 that any source of help to a better economy in fencing has 

 wide application, and, if genuine, a large public benefit. 



We shall not discuss the subject intelligently without 

 some study of the system of fencing that exists, and the 

 history of fencing upon which that system rests. 



THE ENGLISH FENCE SYSTEM. 



The student of the history of the English-speaking peo- 

 ple finds the fenced field associated with the progress of 

 civil liberty of our race through the past five hundred 

 years. In no other European country have the incidents 

 of the land and all the institutions connected therewith 

 been more truly the history of a race than in England. 

 Our English ancestry began to fence their land when their 

 husbandry and pride in English home farming, living on 

 the soil and by the soil, began. Good fencing was urged 

 in Fortescue's elegant treatise on English law in 1403. It 

 was accepted as the first axiom of husbandry in the earliest 

 work on English agriculture by Fitzhcr])ert in 1532, who 

 declares, " If an acre of land be worth sixpence before it 

 is enclosed, it will be worth cightpence when it is enclosed." 

 {Sir A. FitzherberCs Book of Husband ry, 1532.) The 



