BARB WIRE FENCES. 209 



against the hedge was, that it is costly to create and main- 

 tain, treacherous and troublesome always. It engrosses 

 much soil by occupancy and shade. It furnishes coverts 

 and lurking places for all manner of pests of the crop. It 

 is stunted and worthless as a barrier in one place, is hugely 

 overgrown in others. Eno-lish agricultural authorities of 

 repute have claimed that in some of the best farm districts 

 of England the hedges engross one-fifth of the soil. One 

 leading writer declares the loss of one million two hundred 

 acres by the hedgerows that enclose English fields. Prof. 

 Roberts of Cornell University, in a series of letters to the 

 "Rural New Yorker" on the "Lights and Shadows of 

 English Farming," says : "To see a double line of half-dead, 

 unkempt thorn trees, enclosing often less than three acres, 

 makes one exclaim, 'Why cumbereth it the ground?'" 

 Several years ago premiums were ofiered in England for 

 the eradication of these old hedges. 



The Ohio State Agricultural Convention at Columbus, in 

 1877, discussed this subject fully. It was stated by one 

 speaker that some of the hedges in Champaign County were 

 forty feet high, and that you could not get a horse within 

 ten feet of the fence. He had a neighbor who was willing 

 to pay five hundred dollars to get rid of his hedges. 



Is it not about time to get rid of the hedge schoolmasters 

 in our agriculture, for this is the verdict of the last half- 

 century against the hedge, both in America and in England. 



In Illinois and other prairie States, the hedge has been 

 carefully and expensively tested for a farm fence, and it has 

 passed well-nigh out of discussion. 



But the old fences had, and still perpetuate, other evils, 

 whose telling fills many pages of agricultural reports and 

 authorities of repute. 



Secretary Flint's report of 18G1, before referred to, says, 

 in strong language : — 



" The fence waste is not mei'ely in tlie cost of fences and repairing. 

 A very large item is the land occupied by the fence, and worthless be- 

 cause uncultivated on each side. A large part of our fence is Virginia 

 fence, which will measure through the bottom three feet. Bush siding 

 and staked fences take as much. We think, therefore, that four feet is a 

 moderate estimate for the land under and on both sides of our fences. 



