C 34 ] 



Colonel Pickering, on Hedges. 

 Read June 13th, 1809. 



TFashington^ June Ist, 1809. 



Dear Sir, * 



In a letter which I put into the mail yesterday, I asked 

 you some questions, and made some requests and ob- 

 servations, which occurred on the perusal of the Me- 

 moirs of the Philadelphia Society of Agriculture : but I 

 believe I omitted to speak of live hedges. 



When I dwelt at Wyoming, and saw the havoc of 

 fences by freshes in the Susquehannah, the importance 

 of live fences struck me forcibly ; and had I continued 

 there, should doubtless have commenced their introduc- 

 tion. When in 1800 I went into the back parts of the 

 state, away from bottom land, I thought of your hem- 

 lock hedge, of which you have given me the history, 

 substantially, as now recited in the memoirs. It appear- 

 ed to be a perfect fence, easily formed, and with this 

 advantage, that (as I supposed) no domestic animal 

 would brouse it. In this view I mentioned it to some 

 settlers in that quarter. But they told me that sheep 

 would eat hemlock. Cattle also, I now know, will taste 

 it. But so they (sheep particularly) will eat the thorn; on 

 which when young and in hedges, if accessible to sheep, 

 they commit such depredations, that Lord Kaims says he 

 could hardly refrain from murmuring against Provi- 

 dence. 



More than twenty years ago I read Anderson's Es- 

 says on Agriculture, and I well remember his firinci- 



