Where fences must still be maintained, I apprehend that posts and boards are the cheapest material. Though Pine lumber grows dear, Hemlock still abounds; and the rapid destruction of trees for their bark to be used in tanning must give us cheap hemlock boards throughout many ensuing years. Spruce, Tamarack, and other evergreens from our Northern swamps, will come into play after Hemlock shall have been exhausted.
As for posts, Red Cedar is a general favorite; and this tree seems to be rapidly multiplying hereabout. I judge that farmers who have it not, might wisely order it from a nursery and give it an experimental trial. It is hardy; it is clean; it makes but little shade; and it seems to fear no insect whatever. It flourishes on rocky, thin soils; and a grove of it is pleasant to the sight—at least, to mine.
Locust is more widely known and esteemed; but the borer has proved destructive to it on very many farms, though not on mine. I like it well, and mean to multiply it extensively by drilling the seed in rich garden soil and transplanting to rocky woodland when two years old. Sowing the seed among rocks and bushes I have tried rather extensively, with poor success. If it germinates at all, the young tree is so tiny and feeble that bushes, weeds, and grass, overtop and smother it.
That a post set top-end down will last many years longer than if set as it grew, I do firmly believe, though I cannot attest it from personal observation. I understand the reason to be this: Trees absorb or suck up moisture from the earth; and the particles which compose them are so combined and adjusted as to facilitate this operation. Plant a post deeply and firmly in the ground, butt-end downward, and it will continue to absorb moisture from the earth as it did when alive; and the post, thus moistened to-day and dried by wind and sun to-morrow, is thereby subjected to more rapid disintegration and decay than when reversed.
My general conclusion is, that the good farmer will have fewer and better fences than his thriftless neighbor, and that he will study and plan to make fewer and fewer rods of fence serve his needs, taking care that all he retains shall be perfect and conclusive. Breachy cattle are a sad affliction alike to their owner and his neighbor; and shaky, rotting, tumble-down fences, are justly responsible for their perverse education. Let us each resolve to take good care that his own cattle shall in no case afflict his neighbors, and we shall all need fewer fences henceforth and evermore.
XXXVIII.
AGRICULTURAL EXHIBITIONS.
I must have attended not less than fifty State or County Fairs for the exhibition (mainly) of Agricultural Machines and Products. From all these, I should have learned something, and presume I did; but I cannot now say what. Hence, I conclude that these Fairs are not what they might and should be. In other words, they should be improved. But how?