22 Vineyard Culture. 



small shrubs as are best adapted to the climate and 

 locality. These shrubs [Fig. i] will strengthen the 

 levee, and render the crossing of it more difficult. 



[Americans can not realize that vast tracts of land in Europe 

 are cultivated in common, with only a turning furrow, or a 

 pathway, between the different proprietaries, and that all the 

 country is open, even to the road-sides, in many places. We 

 are so accustomed to see everything fenced in from intrusion, 

 and have so long borne this burden of fencing, that we neither 

 realize that it is more oppressive than all our other taxes, nor 

 can we conceive how it strikes the Europeans, who look upon 

 our fences as a great waste of lumber, and by no means as 

 ornamental fringes to our farms. 



Where timber or stone is plenty, and while labor is dear, 

 we must have inclosures to restrain our cattle, or cultivated 

 crops will be impossible. But we may feel encouraged at the 

 progress we are making in this respect, and be happy to 

 know, that in many of the States, laws have been made and 

 enforced, which require that all cattle shall be restrained by 

 their owners. The result of this is, or will be, the abolition 

 of many of these burdensome and cumbrous appendages of 

 the farm ; the cattle will be confined to their appropriate 

 grazing lands, or kept in stables and yards, and there fed by 

 soiling, as it is called carrying the feed to them all the year 

 round and our roads and lanes will no longer be the resort 

 of lean kine and sharp-nosed swine, seeking an entrance into 

 our gardens and cultivated fields, to commit depredations which 

 can never be repaid by their owners ; and causing a grievous 

 moral wrong, by provoking the ill temper of the unfortunate 

 proprietor, which no appraised damages can atone for nor 

 alleviate. 



We rejoice in our cattle law, and hope these animals may 

 ever be restrained, that the fence burden may, in a great de- 

 gree, be thus averted; but we do not expect to see choice 



