BARB WIRE FENCES. 205 



dred years. For a long time what little garden or field culture was 

 done by succeeding American settlers was fenced in. Little by little 

 fences grew, — the law recognized them as essential to the maintenance 

 of trespass, and the time came when communities no longer regarded 

 the expense as a useless one." 



Without further reviewing the fence policy of the different 

 States, enough has been given to show that the conditions of 

 their growth, and the legal system based thereon, is well 

 epitomized in this last extract given. The fences came 

 from necessity, grew with the growth of our farm neighbor- 

 hoods, and so both by law and custom have become firmly a 

 part of our farm system. 



I think we must find the proof of the recognized universal 

 applical)ility of the good and sufficient fence strongest shown 

 in States like New York, where there has never existed a gen- 

 eral fence law, an act of the general assembly in 1691 enab- 

 ling each town within the province " to make and ordain all 

 such rules and orders as may be needful for a better regulat- 

 ing their prudentials in fences." In a pretty thorough inquiry 

 through the towns of New York I find instances of formal 

 regulation by expressed law. But everywhere, in all the 

 towns of New York, the rule of fencing differs in no particu- 

 lar from that of other States. So of Maryland, and even 

 of Louisiana, where unwritten law, the common law of good 

 fences, has always been the rule. 



It is not because our fiirmers have not been told of other 

 methods. Said a writer on rural affairs many years ago : 

 "The reason why European modes have not been intro- 

 duced into American husbandry, is because our farmers do 

 understand, and not because they do not understand, what 

 belongs to their own interests. Had systems of herding or 

 tending beasts at pasture, of soiling and enclosing pastures 

 by portable fences, been profitable, they would have been 

 adopted years ago by practical farmers. Both the herding 

 and the hurdle systems have objections no practical farmer 

 will be likely to seek to overcome, from expense of attend- 

 ants in the one case, and cost of original construction, waste, 

 breakage, and expense of removal, in the other. The best 

 farm authorities have declared that the system of soiling is 

 only a certain mode of purchasing dung, and this becomes 



