NEW ENGLAND FENCES 



A QUESTION of the future, that troubles the mind 

 of the farmer more than almost any other is, 

 What are we to do for fences? The wood-hungry 

 iron horse is eating away the forests greedily and 

 rapidly, and our people are ready to feed him to 

 his fill for a paltry present fee, apparently learning 

 no wisdom from the follies of our forest-destroy- 

 ing ancestors, but carrying on the same old, sense- 

 less, and indiscriminate warfare against trees 

 wherever found, and seldom planting any except 

 fruit-trees and a few shade-trees. 



And, alas ! no just retribution seems to overtake 

 these evil-doers, except that most speculating de- 

 foresters go to the bad pecuniarily, but the curse 

 descends on the sorrowing lovers of trees, and will 

 fall on our children and our children's children, 

 the curse of a withered and wasted land, of hills 

 made barren, of dried-up springs and shrunken 

 streams. 



It seems probable that a generation not far re- 

 moved from this will see the last of the rail fences, 

 those time-honored barriers of NewEngland fields, 

 too generous of timber to be kept up in a land 

 barren of forests. The board fence will endure 

 longer, but will pass away at last, and after it, 



