496 • Fencing — Its Importance, 8fc, 
west, and bottom lands in those regions, -where a fence of this 
kind must be of incalculable value. All the materials required to 
make it are light, and may be manufactured and ready for use 
and transported any distance by land or water. A single canal 
boat will carry twenty panels of fence. 
To make this fence more durable and permanent, a cast iron 
bar has been invented to receive wood or iron pickets. This bar 
though of light weight, is so formed, as to be strong and solid 
when placed in the fence. The pickets of wood may be of any 
desirable shape or size; when of iron, they have the same form, 
in principle as the posts. 
It will readily be perceived that this fence must eventually be- 
come in general use. The durability none can question; the post 
of iron, placed in stone — both indestructible — wood placed upright 
and held by iron bars, and kept painted, would last fifty years. 
When the whole panel is of wood, the bars made of some durable 
timber, and well painted, will last from twenty-five to thirty years. 
In a section of country where stone are not to be obtained, any 
kind of timber now used for posts, of sufficient size, may be used 
by cutting it about three feet in length, and a two inch hole bored 
in the centre, and imbeded in the ground transversely, even with 
the surface, and the iron post inserted, will be a substitute for stone, 
which will be far preferable to a post placed perpendicular in the 
ground. These blocks of wood, laid on top, or wholly in the 
ground, are not subjected to the action of frost or " heaving out," 
as it is generally termed, when posts are raised by the frost. It 
is well known that on moist soils, a post decays very fast at the 
surface of the ground; and even cedar posts are often found to 
have been eaten off by some chemical process acting upon that 
particular juncture. On sandy loam particularly, chestnut posts 
will decay even with the ground in a few years, whereas the top 
and bottom remain sound many years. 
Though stone can not be found, and wood for blocks should be 
substituted to insert the iron posts, that alone would obviate one 
important difficulty, as it is well known that where posts are 
rotted off, the whole fence, boards and all, are nearly a total loss. 
It is entirely different with the iron post fence, for when the 
blocks of wood become decomposed, the position of the fence 
would show it, and the panels would yield to the inclined position 
of the post without any injury to it, and being light and incapable 
of resisting wind sufficient to break it, would consequently receive 
no injury from the storm. 
Another advantage in the construction of fence, which would 
be quite a desideratum to farmers as well as turnpike and rail 
road companies, of the middle, northern, and western states, and 
of the public generally. It is well known that the drifting of 
