only, with the latter, have come to my knowledge. 
The first was made by myself. I planted the seed, 
alter soaking them in hot water until they swelled 
considerably, in which state they, as well as the seed 
of the yellow locust, and several other similar seed 
which I have soaked in the same way, will come up 
as readily and certainly as peas or beans. The plants, 
however, after growing two or three years, and be¬ 
ing cultivated during the time, began to die in spots ; 
while those which survived, threw out so few side- 
limbs, and manifested such a tendency to grow erect, 
that I extirpated them. The other experiment was 
mentioned to me, many years ago, by Mr. Rufus 
King, our former minister in England, who told me 
that it failed with him. He made the same objection 
as I have done to this tree. Of thorn hedges I have 
seen several in Maryland and Delaware, and a few in 
my own state. All of those in the first mentioned 
states had gaps in them, where the bushes had died, 
apparently from some disease or other. They were 
chiefly of the maple leaved thorn, as well as I recol¬ 
lect. The most considerable trial that I have ever 
known, in Virginia, was commenced, many years ago, 
under the directions of an English farmer, near Fre¬ 
dericksburg, on the main stage road, and with at least 
two varieties of thorn, the English hawthorn being 
one of them. This hedge did not succeed ; but at 
the death of the first projector, the farm became the 
property of the present proprietor, who made an ef¬ 
fort to revive and extend it, at least a mile in length, 
chiefly, I believe, with the maple leaf thorn. From 
having passed it several times a year ever since, I can 
testify that no man could well have taken more pains 
to insure success, yet nearly all the thorns are now 
dead, and the remainder fast declining. This trial 
having been made within two or three miles of the 
head of tide water, I think it fair to infer, that none 
of the thorns could be relied upon for hedges, in 
any of the tide water portion of Virginia. Farther 
south, I presume, they could still less be depended on. 
Of the pyracantha, I have seen but one small hedge. 
That was in Maryland, but although beautiful to the 
eye, it was evidently no protection against mischie¬ 
vous stock, nor did it appear capable of being made 
so. Our red cedar is liable to two incurable diseases, 
one of which seems on the increase, and is constant¬ 
ly killing thousands of the trees, as they grow natu¬ 
rally in our woods. It is a worm in the roots, that 
accomplishes its work of death, before the limbs and 
leaves give any warning of it. The other cause of 
their destruction is also a worm or insect, which at¬ 
tacks the trees above ground, and soon colonizes them 
with innumerable cocoons, which are attached to their 
ten derest branches, and soon kill them. 
The Osage Orange, of which we have lately seen 
some very favorable accounts, has not yet, I believe, 
been tided in the Altantic states ; and the non-de¬ 
script, or evergreen Carolina rose, I know, from per¬ 
sonal observation, will not flourish in the latitude of 
Virginia. There is one remaining objection which is 
common to all the plants and times I have enumerat¬ 
ed :—that is, the comparatively small portion of our 
country in which they grow naturally. None can be 
found but in particular regions, and these are of no 
great extent, compared with the whole territory of 
the United States. 
My last objection to live fences, as a general sys¬ 
tem of inclosure, is altogether insuperable, unless, in¬ 
deed, the old laws of entail and primogeniture were 
re-established. The existing law of descents, in all 
the states, I believe, without exception, compel a di¬ 
vision of property, in every case of intestacy ; and so 
much is the practice favored by public sentiment, that 
even where a will is made, the testator himself, in 
ninety-nine cases, probably, out of a hundred, directs 
a division. If the property be land, and it be cut up 
into several parts, this necessarily produces almost an 
entire change in the inclosures. Some must be pulled 
down and others put up where none stood before ; 
and should they happen to be live hedges, to remove, 
is to kill; whereas either rail or stone fences may be 
changed, without any other expense than transport¬ 
ing and re-erecting them. 
Upon the whole, then, I conclude that live fences, 
in our country, are no where preferable to those made 
of rails, or post and rails, unless where timber is very 
scarce and dear, or near large towns, where inclosures 
of dead wood are liable to be burned. Even there, I 
deem it demonstrable, that stone walls would be far 
cheaper, if the materials could be procured near at 
hand ; and if not, that walls of brick would be vastly 
preferable, especially if made according to the cheap 
plan recommended in the third volume of the Ameri¬ 
can Farmer, page 262, by Mr. William Noland, the 
present superintendent of the public buildings in 
Washington.* This article is so worthy of public at¬ 
tention, that I would have copied the whole, in this 
letter, if I had not feared that my communication was 
already too long. I must take the liberty, however, 
* This article shall be copied into the Cultivator as 
soon as our limits will permit. 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
strongly to recommend it for republication in the Cul¬ 
tivator. 
I remain, dear sir, your ob’t ser’t, 
JAMES M. GARNETT. 
REMARKS. 
We either did not sufficiently explain our object in 
the publications which we have made upon live fences, 
or have not been understood by our highly respectable 
correspondent. We did not intend to recommend the 
culture of live fences, as a substitute for stone walls in 
stony districts, nor for post and rail, or post and board 
fences, where these materials abound, nor even for 
substantial white pine stump fences—for like our cor¬ 
respondent, we think these are to be preferred where 
the materials are abundant or cheap. But there are 
large districts of our country, particularly in the west, 
where there are neither stones nor pine-stumps, and 
where fencing timber is already scarce, and likely to be 
more so, from which we have received frequent inqui¬ 
ries in this matter: And although we are disposed to 
pay the highest deference to the opinions of Mr. Gar¬ 
nett, he will pardon us for persisting in the hope, 
that we have plants, indigenous to our country, which 
will make good hedges, and that it will be found prac¬ 
ticable and economical, in the long run, to cultivate live 
fences in the districts to which we have alluded. We 
adduce our own as a case in point. Common stone 
costs us two dollars a load. Wooden materials for 
fence are almost as expensive, and their duration, ex¬ 
cept the posts are cedar, which cost nearly fifty cents 
each, does not exceed ten or twelve years. These cir¬ 
cumstances induced us to attempt to raise hedges; and 
to try the English and native thorns, and also the honey 
locust. Although we cannot confidently assert that we 
have been successful, we can say that we believe we 
shall be successful with both the native thorn and the 
honey locust. As yet we have experienced no injury 
from disease or insect, though the ground mice have 
done us some damage, in our hedge as well as in our 
fruit and other trees. The comparative expense of dead 
and live fences never engaged our attention, though we 
recollected that Caleb Kirk had endeavored to show, 
and to our mind had done it satisfactorily, that the lat¬ 
ter were to be preferred on the score of economy. 
There are besides considerations in favor of live fences, 
which apply with some force in the prairie-west, and 
in the north, which do not apply in Virginia: they are 
wanted as shelter, to protect the crops from the severity 
of the winter blast. 
With this explanation of our motives, we have no rea¬ 
son to regret that we have been misapprehended by our 
very able correspondent; because it has been the means 
of procuring us a valuable essay on the subject, which we 
feel assured will be read with interest and profit by our 
patrons, whose interest it is our duty to serve.— Cond. 
Cult. 
Farm Machinery—Peat Earth. 
Wheat-Sheaf Farm, Staten Island, ) 
December 18, 1837. ^ 
J. Btjel, Esq.—Dear Six - ,—I received your esteem¬ 
ed letter of the 20th ult. requesting a communication 
from me as to my mode of improving and fertilizing 
my farm, and a description and drawing of my machi¬ 
nery. In withholding the latter, for the present, I am 
actuated by an apprehension, that in so far as experi¬ 
ence may hereafter suggest changes, I may regret 
having given publicity to it, while yet imperfect. It 
has much of novelty, and observation upon its practi¬ 
cal movements yet continues to suggest guards and 
alterations, more or less essential to its operations in 
the most perfect state in which I may be able eventu¬ 
ally to put it. Since I had the pleasure of shewing it 
to you, I have concluded, (as I believe I then suggest¬ 
ed I might,) to adapt it to public, as well as my pri¬ 
vate, uses, by adding an eighteen horse loind power, 
with four run of stones, to be applied, at pleasure, in¬ 
dependent of, or in connection with, the four horse 
farming and foddering power I then exhibited to you, 
and to make it what I call a Foddering and Grist 
Mill, for myself and the vicinity. I become daily 
more and more convinced it may be made both use¬ 
ful and economical. If it does not prove so in the se¬ 
quel, I should myself call the further pursuit of it little 
better than folly. I never yet was disposed to “flash 
a shew ,” lately so prevalent, and trust not to have be¬ 
gun with this. Of one thing I am sure, that farmers 
reflecting on it in the quietude of their habits and oc¬ 
cupations, would never feel disposed to approve it, if 
it could not be made both useful and economical, as 
well as profitable to them to do so. 
In Europe, a labor-saving machine, if not a curse, 
at least is calculated to draw down the imprecations 
of the suffering poor upon the head of its inventor— 
while here, where we have more of labor than labor¬ 
ers in the vineyard, such an implement is hailed as .a 
blessing. It, as it were, adds to the laboring popula¬ 
tion of a country yet growing towards its maturity, 
and the incentive which, as a substitute for labor at 
a high price, it gives, makes us what, from local cir¬ 
cumstances and exigencies, we are, the most inventive 
people on earth. 
On referring to Loudon’s Agriculture, (in the Sup¬ 
plement, page 1277,) you will find a notice of a thresh¬ 
ing machine, said to be one of “ the most complete 
17 
agricultural implements in England,” bearing some re¬ 
semblance in its objects to a part of mine, but effect¬ 
ed through a medium infinitely more expensive and 
complicated, and of which I had no knowledge till af¬ 
ter mine was constructed. Erected, as that was, 
specially for and under the patronage and high pro¬ 
tection of the Duke of Gloucester, Loudon mentions 
it “ as a singular and melancholy sign of the times, 
that the parties who had the chief merits of the in¬ 
vention, were afraid of giving their names to the pub¬ 
lic. The agriculturists (says he) of a future, and we 
trust no distant day, will hardly believe it possible that 
the destruction of threshing machines should have 
been popular in England in 1830.” 
I thank heaven my lot was cast where, if I realize 
my views in this, there will be none to censure them ; 
and where, above all other places, he emphatically 
does the human family the best service, who makes 
two blades of grass flourish where but one had pre¬ 
viously languished. “ If (as you say) there is a pure 
pleasure to be derived from human actions, it must be 
found in a disinterested endeavor to benefit our gene¬ 
ration and our country.” If it shall be my lot, in the 
busied retirement to which I have fled, to effect such 
an object, I shall, indeed, not have lived without an 
end, and will die comfortably. 
Rut in reply to your letter. 1 can only for the pre¬ 
sent, on the subject of my machinery, say with you, 
that “barring accidents” and “in good time,” I shall 
not fail to comply with your wishes. Its scope and 
objects, in part at least, are generally explained, if 
your notice of it in your August number (page 100) 
is referred to, and taken in connection with this let¬ 
ter. 
As to the other part of your request, “my mode of 
improving and fertilizing my farm,” I find that too ge¬ 
neral for one communication. I shall, “ since you will 
have it so,” on a future occasion, comply cheerfully 
and more at large ; for the present, however, there is 
one you have adverted to in your last number, (page 
157,) which has much interested me, under a perfect 
conviction 1 always entertained, that swamp eai-th 
might be used with more advantage than usual with 
us. With “Peat Earth and Peat Ashes” I was 
wholly unacquainted when I came to my farm ; but in 
the process of clearing and bringing under cultivation 
its “ worse than useless ” parts, I sought information 
through channels similar to those to which your arti¬ 
cle refers. I have reason to thank you for the ac¬ 
count it gives of the Dutch and Flemish practice. 
Their books I had sought in vain in New-York, but I 
am pleased to find them consistent with such as I 
have had access to. Permit me, in return for the ad¬ 
vantage I have in this derived from your columns, to 
refer you and your readers to whatT have met with 
on the same subject. The swamps which furnish peat 
earth or turf, nine-tenths of the laboring Irish emi¬ 
grants are familiar with under the local appellation of 
a “peat moss.” They generally seem to be so with 
the burning of it, and practically with the different 
modes of disengaging from it the acids which check 
its putrefaction, and consequent adaptation to vegeta¬ 
ble nutriment. They have served their apprentice¬ 
ship to it as agricultural laborers in the noted bog’s of 
Ireland. 
The use of peat earth led to much disappointment 
in Great Britain, until Lord Meadowbank scientifical¬ 
ly explained its properties, uses and modes of applica¬ 
tion, and I believe him to have been the author of the 
present practice both there and elsewhere in relation 
to it. 
Loudon says, (pages 745 to 747,) “ mossy and bog¬ 
ey surfaces occupy a very considerable portion of the 
British Isles. In Ireland alone there are of flat red 
bog, capable of being converted to the general pur¬ 
poses of agriculture, 1,576,000 acres, and of peat soil 
covering mountains, capable of being improved for 
pasture, or beneficially applied to the purposes of 
plantations, 1,255,000, making together nearly 3,000,- 
000 of acres. Black mosses, though formerly con¬ 
sidered irreclaimable, are now found capable of great 
amelioration. By cultivation they may be completely 
changed in their quality and appearance, and from a 
peaty, become a soft vegetable earth, of great fertili¬ 
ty.” 
I leave you to insert as much further of this refe¬ 
rence as you may deem best for the guidance of your 
readers. It will however serve to shew, in a great ma¬ 
ny districts of both England, Ireland and Scotland, a 
general practice similar to that you have yourself 
quoted as to Holland and Belgium, and which I have 
no doubt prevails in the north of Europe. I had my¬ 
self seen none but the Chat moss, over which the Li¬ 
verpool and Manchester rail-road lies ; but then the 
idea occurred to me, that it might, by drainage, be 
similarly applied, and as I find, by the last edition of 
Loudon, it now is. On draining my swamps, I dis¬ 
covered in the ditch, about three feet below the sur¬ 
face, a compact stratum, say twelve inches thick, ex¬ 
clusively of leaves and of minute vegetable fibre, so 
small as to decay under an ordinary exposure to the 
