THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



271 



should require re-laying, the material is in- 

 destructible. 



I tax myself with the making at least fifty 

 rods of this fence every year; and commonly 

 I make more. Time will bring about what I 

 am aiming at — a well fenced farm — and whe- 

 ther I see it myself or not, I flatter myself 

 that the next generation will. My quarry is 

 in the wood loi, and I commenced by putting 

 a wall around the woods, and along the line 

 of my farm, which was most distant from my 

 house, and having made my back fences good, 

 I now build where most required. On the 

 back side of my farm 1 have nearly three 

 hundred rods without angles. 



It is not every farm that has a good quarry, 

 and my plan cannot become general, so I look 

 with great interest to your wire fences; and, as 

 I said before, I will go to Buffalo as soon as 

 you notify me that you have a good one to 

 show me. 



I have had some experience in constructing 

 underground drains; and as I am writing 

 about stone work, I may as well give you my 

 plan of laying the stone for the drain. I do 

 not claim any merit for myself in regard to 

 it, as it is the common drain here. 



The ditch should be two and a half feet 

 deep, and about a foot wide on the bottom, 

 and say eighteen inches on the top. Place a 

 stone on each side of the bottom, say three or 

 four inches in thickness, and over, and partly 

 between these put, not a flat stone, but a stone 

 that has a rounding side, which bowing down 

 between the side stones, while the ends are 

 supported by them, will keep every thing into 

 its place. It is necessary to put a stone at 

 each end of the cap stone, which will reach 

 from it to the back, and then fill up about one- 

 half of the depth of the ditch with small 

 stones, and the earth being put on, the thing 

 will be finished. A man who understands the 

 business will readily select his stones as they 

 are laid along the bank, and lay from twelve 

 to twenty rods in a day.— Wool Grower. 



THE FIRST NEWSPAPER. 



It is somewhat remarkable that the news, 

 paper press, powerful element as it is in mo- 

 dern civilization, is scarcely two centuries 

 old. It is equally remarkable that a means! 

 of instruction and amusement so apparent I 

 should not have been established until nearly I 

 two hundred years after the discovery of print- ! 

 ing! The common belief that the first Eng- j 

 lish newspaper was published in 1588, to an- 

 nounce the defeat, of the Spanish Armada, is ' 

 now known to be a popular error, the printed 

 sheet in the British Museum, called the Eng- 

 lish Mercurie and dated in that year, having 

 been proved a forgery of a century later date. 

 The originator of the mistake was Mr. Chal- 

 mers, who, in his life of Rudiman, entered 

 into ihe history of newspapers. He had seen 



the broad sheet in the Museum, and, accepting 

 it for what it pretended to be, had announced 

 it as the first English newspaper. Nichols, 

 D'Israeii and other writers, followed Chal- 

 mers, without inquiry, and from these authors 

 the error crept into the Encyclopedias, and 

 all the books of the day in which newspapers 

 were discussed. Few assertions are now per- 

 haps so generally believed as that the English 

 Mercurie was the first English newspaper. — 

 The detection of the error we owe to the bi- 

 bliographer, Mr.Watts, of the British Museum, 

 who, having occasion to examine the Mercurie, 

 saw at once that the type and paper were of 

 comparatively modern origin — an opinion 

 which had been confirmed by every subse- 

 quent examination, and it has been freely- 

 scrutinized by capable judges since. 



The first newspaper was issued towards the 

 close of the reign of James the First, and was 

 published in London by a man named Butter. 

 This individual had been a hired letter writer, 

 in the pay of numerous country gentlemen — 

 his business being to pick up the news of Lon- 

 don and send a written sheet of it weekly to 

 his employers. The thought finally struck 

 him that he might serve his customers more 

 quickly, and enlarge his business indefinitely 

 by printing instead of writing his sheets. At 

 first, however, the enterprise met little en- 

 couragement. The English are not a people 

 fond of innovations, and the old manuscript 

 letter sheets were generally preferred. But- 

 ter's paper was laughed at by the wits and ill 

 supported by the public. Ben Jonson in his 

 comedy, "The Staple of News," made the 

 new journal the butt of his ridicule. Finally, 

 however, the invention became better appre- 

 ciated, and newspapers increase in size, merit 

 and number; and so late as the beginning of 

 the last century the written news letter was 

 still in existence, the delight of antiquated 

 country gentlemen, who worshipped it as a 

 relic of "the old times." In 1709 the first 

 morning paper appeared in London, and now 

 discussion was combined with news, for here- 

 tofore the journals had confined themselves 

 entirely to the mere narration of events, and, 

 those chiefly foreign. Indeed more than one 

 editor had been severely punished for pan dug 

 news about the government; and so late as 

 1710 a lad of nineteen was hung for publish- 

 ing an article against hereditary right. 



Prior to the issue of Butter's journal, there 

 had been various gazettes, as they were called, 

 published in different countries in Europe; 

 and there is a popular impression that these 

 were newspapers. But such is not the fact. 

 The gazettes were merely occasional broad- 

 sheets, or pamphlets, published after some 

 important event, as a proclamation is now 

 published. They were not at all permanent, 

 much less periodical in their nature, two im- 

 portant qualities requisite for the real news- 

 paper. Nor was it until the age of Addison, 

 Steele and Swift— as we said — that journals 

 began to assume their present influential posi- 



