AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 507 



tate, and are wafted by the wind, over tens of thousands of acres, 

 many are buried in the soil to so great a depth by plowing and 

 otherwise, that atmospheric influence fails, perhaps, for centuries 

 to reach them. At length some enterprising man like our friend 

 Mapes, invents a plow that, with comparatively speaking little 

 exertion, finds its way into this solidified earth, admits the air, 

 and developes the vitality of what is called a new and unknown 

 weed. I have buried varieties of seeds for future generations of 

 men, some thousands of years hence to examine and speculate 

 upon. A few years since a particular friend of mine cleared a 

 tract of land in the Illinois, in the fall of the year, and the fol- 

 lowing spring jmrslain covered the whole area of ground in one 

 dense sheet, and what is particularly remarkable, the weed was 

 not known at all in that section of country. The following year 

 another plot of ten "acres was cleared, and he anticipated the same 

 result, when, to his amazement, pecan nuts, instead of purslain, 

 covered the ground, and there were no trees of the same charac- 

 ter witliin fifty miles of the spot, and the amount of manure made 

 in a year, with twenty head of stock, occasionally assisted by a 

 load of muck, head lands, straw, &c., would not only pay the 

 whole expense of managing a large farm, but leave a considerable 

 profit for the farmer. I have traveled hundreds of miles in Ger- 

 many, without ever seeing the sign of a fence; magnificent trees 

 loaded with delicious fruit, mark th^ .l^a^f highways, the dis- 

 tances apart, varieties, &c., being prescribed by law, and inspected 

 at stated periods by public officers to see that there is no failure 

 of compliance by the people with these admirable legal provis- 

 ions. As there is no country on the globe so thoroughly ruled 

 by public opinion as ours, we have only to make up our minds to 

 render fences unnecessary by the passage of proper laws, and the 

 United States will save annually two hundred and forty millions 

 of dollars. 



Still as posts must be used in cities, great waste of material may 

 be prevented by pr^aring them in such a manner that tliey wi\ 

 last as long as stone or iron. This is done by changing the sul_ 

 phuret of iron found in some varieties of co^l,into sulphate of the 

 protoxide of iron, in the manner following the vitriolic liquid of 



