they are reared, and from that moment begin to tend towards decay; so that the person who builds this kind of fence immediately receives the full benefit thereof: whereas hedges, being at first weak and tender, stand in need of attention and care, and do not become a fence for several years after they are planted; and, as they continue to increase in strength, and gradually acquire a higher and higher degree of perfection, it is long before they begin to fall towards decay; so that they are, in general, infinitely more durable than dikes, although they are longer in becoming of use to the person who plants them. Which of these two kinds of fences may, upon the whole, be most eligible, must, in general, be determined by the circumstances and views of the possessor of the ground to be enclosed. If he is a tenant who has a short lease, without a prospect of getting it renewed; or, if he has immediate occasion for a complete fence; it will be, in general, most prudent in him to make choice of dikes, if the materials for rearing these are at hand; but, if there is any probability that his posterity may reap any advantage from these enclosures, it will be almost always more for his advantage to make choice of hedges. A dike built of freestone and lime will be almost as durable as a hedge; although, in general, it will neither be so cheap nor agreeable. But dry stone dikes, unless built of the finest quarried stone, are of such a perishable nature, as to be hardly ever worth the expense of rearing; and never, excepting where the field that you would wish to enclose has plenty of stones upon its surface, which you are under a necessity of carrying away before the field can be improved. In this situation a man may, in some measure, be excused, if he should be tempted to put them into dikes; because the carriage of these stones may be said to cost him nothing and he may, perhaps, be at some loss how to dispose of them in any other manner. But, in all other circumstances, it is very bad economy to rear fences of this kind, as feal (sod) dikes can always be built at one fourth of the expense that these would cost, and will answer all purposes equally well, and, if carefully built, will be kept in repair for any number of years at as small an expense as they could be. The want of durability generally complained of in these dikes is owing to their bad construction. The greatest part of them are made of a considerable thickness, with a ditch on each side; the heart of the dike being made up with the earth that is taken from these ditches; and only a thin wall, on each side, is built of solid feal from top to bottom; the consequence of which is, that as the loose earth that is thrown into the middle of the dike subsides much more than the seal on each side, the top of the dike sinks down; and, of course, the two side walls are pressed too much upon the inside, so as to bilge (or swell) out about the middle, and quickly crumble down to dust. To avoid this inconvenience, I have always chosen to build my dikes of this sort thinner than usual: they being only three feet and half thick at the bottom; one foot, or a very little more, at top; and five feet high: taking care to have them built in such a manner, as that every sod (or feal), from top to bottom binds the join

ings of the others below it, with as much accuracy as the bricks in a well built wall. The uppermost course of feal is cut a little longer than those that are immediately below it, and placed with the grassy side uppermost, so as to project a little on each side; which not only helps to throw the water a little off the dike, but also to prevent sheep or cattle from attempting to jump over it so readily as they otherwise might do. At the foot of the dike, on each side, is dug a small ditch, about one foot and a half or two feet deep; leaving a ledget of a few inches broad on each side, that the dike may not be undermined by the crumbling down of the loose earth into the ditch. These ditches not only help to give the dike an additional height, and keep its foundation dry; but are also of use to prevent cattle from coming close to it and rubbing upon it, or tearing it down with their horns, which they are very apt to do if this precaution be omitted. The earth that is taken out of the ditches may be thrown outwards, into the place that was occupied by the feal that has been taken to build the dike; and, if the field is in grass, a few seeds may be sowed upon it, and it will soon be covered as well as the rest of the field. By having the joints bound in every direction, the fabric is rendered much firmer than it could be by any irregular manner of working, while it is at the same time more easily reared. If the ground is soft, and the feal rise well, I get a fence of this kind done for one halfpenny per yard; but, if it is not good to work, a little more must be allowed. As to the time that a fence of this kind may stand without needing any repair, the oldest has now stood ten years, and seems to be nearly as firm as when first built. I have seen some walls of poor cottages which have been built somewhat after this manner, that have been good after standing forty or fifty years: but their durability depends greatly upon the nature of the feal of which they are formed. The best is that which is taken from poor ground of a spongy quality, which is generally covered with a strong sward of coarse benty grass. And, in situations where this can be had, I would recommend this as the cheapest and best temporary fence that could be reared. The greatest inconvenience that attends this species of fence is, the danger it runs of being torn down by the horns, or wasted away by the rubbing of cattle upon it; which they will sometimes do notwithstanding the ditches. This may be effectually prevented by planting a row of sweet briar (or eglantine) plants between the first and second course of feal when the dike is built, which will not fail to grow with luxuriance, and in a short time defend the dike from every attack of this kind. But if sheep are to be kept in the enclosures, this plant ought not, on any account, to be employed; for, as that animal naturally flies to the fences for shelter in stormy weather, the prickles of the straggling branches of the briar will catch hold of the wool, and tear it off in great quantities, to the great detriment of the flock and loss of the proprietor. In these cases, if the possessor of the ground is not afraid of the bad consequences that may be dreaded from the spreading of whins (furze), it would be much better to scatter a few of the seeds of this

plant along the ledget at the foot of the dike, which would quickly become a preservative for it, and be otherwise of use as a green food for his sheep during the winter season. But, before he ventures to sow this plant, let him remember, that where it is once established it will hardly fail to spread through the adjoining fields, and can hardly be ever afterwards thoroughly rooted out. I have often imagined, that this kind of fence might be greatly improved both in beauty and strength, by planting a row of ivy plants beneath the first course of feal in building the dike; which would, in a short time, climb up the sides of the dike and cover the whole with a close and beautiful net-work of woody fibres, covered with leaves of the most beautiful verdure; which would tend to preserve the dike from being eaten away by frost, and other vicissitudes of weather. And when it is arrived at the top, it would there send out a number of strong woody branches, forming a sort of hedge, that would afford some shelter to the fields, and break the force of the wind considerably. I have seen a garden wall that had been built of stone and clay, ornamented and strengthened in this way. I have had the experience of ivy growing well upon a dry stone dike; and have likewise seen it growing up the walls, and covering whole cottages built of feal; which have by this means been preserved entire, long after the walls that had been naked have fallen to decay. But, not having had plants of this kind at hand, I have not had an opportunity of trying it in the manner proposed; although, I think, there is the greatest reason to hope for success. Whins have been often employed as a fence when sowed upon the top of a bank. They are attended with the convenience of coming very quickly to perfection, and of growing upon a soil on which few other plants could be made to thrive : but, in the way that they are cornmonly employed, they are neither a strong nor a lasting fence. See HEDGE. The fences hitherto mentioned are only intended to preserve fields from the intrusion of cattle; but, on some occasions, it is necessary to have a fence that would even resist the efforts of men to break through it: as around bleaching fields, orchards, &c. the want of which often subjects the proprietor of such fields to very disagreeable accidents. To effectuate this, it is necessary to begin by trenching up or ploughing a large belt all around the field you mean to enclose, of forty or fifty feet or more in breadth, if you find it convenient; the outer edge of which should be enclosed by a good dike, or a ditch and hedge. This belt should be kept in culture one year, and well manured, if your situation will admit of it; and laid up before winter in such a manner that no water may be allowed to lodge upon it; and planted in winter all over with plants of eglantine so thick as not to be above two feet from one another; and between these put a good number of young birch plants not above two years old. interspersed with hazels, oak, ash, rawn (wild service), and other trees that will thrive upon your soil; together with thorns, hoilies, brambles, and wood-bine (honey suckle); and having then fenced it from cattle, and kept down the weeds that may rise upon its surface by

VOL. IX.

the hoe, as long as you can conveniently get access into it, leave it afterwards to nature. If this is done, and your soil be not extremely bad, the belt in a very few years will be entirely filled with a close bush of trees, so intermixed with the bending branches of the eglantine, and bound together by the trailing shoots of the bramble and wood-bine, that no animal above the size of a cat could penetrate; especially when it is of such a depth as I have recommended.—But as all kinds of trees and shrubs, if planted very close upon one another, become naked at the root when they arrive at any considerable size, care should be taken to prevent it from ever coming to that state, by cutting it down whenever it becomes in danger of being open at the root. And as it would be improper ever to leave the field entirely defenceless, it is a great advantage to have the belt as broad as it conveniently may be, so that the one-half of it may be a sufficient fence; by which means, we shall have it in our power to cut down the inside and the outside of the best alternately, so as still to keep the thicket young, and never to want at any time a sufficient fence; and the brush wood that this afforded at each cutting would, in almost every situation, yield such a revenue as would do much more than indemnify the proprietor for the rent of the ground that was occupied by this fence. And, if the field was in such a situation as required shelter, some trees might be allowed to grow to their full size about the middle without any inconvenience, if the belt were of a sufficient breadth.'

'There is one other species of fencing (continues Dr. Anderson), as useful as any of those already mentioned, which is in general much less understood, and more difficult to execute properly, viz. the method of securing the banks of rivers from being washed away by the violence of the stream, and of preventing the damages that may otherwise be occasioned by the swelling of the waters. It frequently happens that, when a river runs in a bed of rich vegetable mould, the least accident that may chance to divert the stream towards any particular part of the bank, causes it to sweep away large tracts of fine ground, to the very great detriment of the proprietor, as well as the public; as this fine mould is usually carried to the sea, and the place that the water leaves, to occupy the new bed that it thus forms for itself, is generally of a much worse quality, consisting chiefly of stones, sand, and gravel. In some cases, where the whole force of the current is quite close to the bank, and the materials necessary for fencing it are not to be found, it may perhaps be impossible or very difficult totally to prevent this evil; but for the most part it admits of a cure that can be obtained at a pretty moderate expense. These ravages are always greatest where the bank rises perpendicularly to a pretty considerable height above the ordinary surface of the water, and never at those places where the banks shelve down gradually towards the water's edge; for when the river is swelled to a great height by rains, and runs with a force and rapidity greater than usual, it strikes violently against these perpendicular banks that directly oppose its course, which, being composed of earth quite bare and uncovered, are easily soft

L

ened by the water, and quickly washed away; so that the upper part of the bank, being thus undermined, falls by its own weight into the river, and is carried off in prodigious quantities: whereas at those parts of the bank that shelve gradually downwards to the water's edge, when the river rises to any considerable height, it gently glides along its surface; which, being defended by the matted roots of the grass with which it is covered, scarcely sustains any damage at all; and is nearly the same after the water has retired within its banks as before the inundation. These facts, which no one who has bestowed the least attention to this subject can fail to have observed, clearly point out, that the first and most necessary step towards a cure, is to level down the edge of the bank that is next to the water, so as to make it slope gradually down towards the river. If the bank is very high, and you have no other particular use for the earth that must be taken from it, the easiest method of disposing of it, will be to throw it into the river; but, in whatever manner you may dispose of the earth, the slope of the bank must be continued until the inner edge of it is as low as the surface of the water at the driest time of the year, and be made to ascend gradually upwards from the water with an easy slope, till it comes to the level of the ground, or at least rises to such a height as the water never exceeds. This operation ought to be performed as early in summer as possible, and should be either immediately covered with turf, pared from the surface of some field that has a very strong sward upon it, taking care to lay these in such a manner as to be in as little danger as possible of being washed away by any accidental flood that might happen before they had grown together; or, if turf of this kind cannot be easily had, it should be sowed very thick with the seeds of some small matt-rooted grass (such as the poa repens, or creeping meadow grass), 'that should be kept in readiness for this purpose. If the stream has not been extremely rapid at the foot of the bank, some of the earth that was thrown into the water will be allowed to subside to the bottom, and will there form a bank of loose soft earth, which will be of great use afterwards in preventing the face of the bank under water from being washed away; but, in order to secure this bulwark effectually for the future, the surface of this soft earth ought to be instantly stuck full of the roots of bog reeds, flags, water spider-wort, rushes, and other matt-rooted aquatic plants; which, if allowed to remain till they have once struck root, will afterwards form a barrier that nothing will ever be able to destroy. But if the stream be too rapid to admit of this, and the bank of soft earth is much deeper than the surface of the water, it will be of use to fill up the breast of the bank with loose stones carelessly thrown in, till they rise near the surface of the water; which would most effectually secure it against any future encroachments, if the bank is sloped away above. If stones cannot be easily got for this purpose, the only resource is to dig the bank so low, that, at the undermost edge, it may be always below the surface of the water; and to carry it out in this way for a considerable distance, and thus stick the whole surface that is

below the water full of matt-rooted aquatic plants; which will in a great measure, if not entirely, defend it from any future encroachments. This bank ought to continue to shelve downwards even where it is below water, and those aquatics that will grow in the greatest depth of water should be planted on the innermost brink, and the others behind them. The water spiderwort will grow in four feet deep of water, and the roots of the common yellow-flowered water iris form such a strong and compact covering upon the surface of the soil on which it grows, as would defend it from being affected by the water almost as well as a rock. It is likewise an advantage attending this plant, that it grows upon a firm bottom, and chiefly delights in running water. If the stratum of soft earth is not so deep as to reach to the surface of the water, and lies upon a stratum of rock or hard gravel, there will be no occasion for throwing in stones of any kind. But, as it is difficult to unite the vegetable mould to any of these strata, there will always be some danger of its separating from these in violent inundations; and, if the water once get an entry, it will not fail to grow larger and larger by every future inundation. To prevent this inconvenience, it will be necessary, after you have sloped the earth away till you reach the gravel or rock, to cover the place where the edge of the earth joins the inferior stratum with a good many small stones, if they can be found; sowing between them the seeds of any kind of plants that you think are most likely to thrive, which have strong matted roots with as small and flexible tops as possible. From the impossibility of ever making earth adhere firmly to stone of any kind, it must always be an improper practice to face the banks of rivers to a certain height with stones which is coped at top with earth.'

Mr. Arthur Young, in his Annals of Agriculture, vol. XIII. has supplied us with the following method of fencing, from the pen of W. Erskine, Esq. "The importance of good fences is universally acknowledged by every lover of husbandry, although there are various opinions about the kinds of them, every one being naturally prejudiced in favor of those he has been most accustomed to see, or by the opinion of others whose judgment he relies on. An intelligent correspondent, in the second volume of the Bath Papers on Agriculture, is so warm an advocate for quickset hedges, as to make him totally condemn the dead walls which are to be seen on the road between Bath and Cirencester, and in many other parts of England. I hope he will not take it amiss, if I cannot absolutely assent to his assertion, that quickset hedges are more useful and profitable.' That they are more ornamental cannot be denied, and they are generally allowed to afford more shelter; but the length of time, the constant attention, and continual expense of defending them until they bear even a resemblance of a fence, induces many people, in those places where the materials are easily procured, to prefer the dry stone walls; for though the first cost is considerable, yet as the farmer reaps the immediate benefit of the fence (which is undoubtedly the most secure one), they are thought on the whole to be the least expensive;

besides, the cattle in exposed situations, and especially in these northern parts, are so impatient of confinement at the commencement of the long, cold, wet nights, that no hedges I have ever yet seen in any part of this island are sufficient to keep them in. These inconveniences probably suggested to the late Sir George Suttie (eminent in East Lothian for his love of, and skill in, agriculture), an idea of a fence, that at once joined the warmth and ornament of the hedge with the almost perpetual fence of the wall. If I mistake not, you have, in some of your useful works, recommended hedges to be planted against the common dry stone walls: Sir George Suttie rather improved on this thought; he planted his hedges after the common method here, in the face of the ditch; but instead of putting a paling, or post and rail on the top of the bank, he placed a wall of two feet and a half high. His local situation induced him to build with lime, and, in places where that commodity is tolerably reasonable, it is the best method, as the satisfaction it affords by requiring no repairs, and the duration more than repays the expense; but, where the price of lime is high, they may be built without any cement, and answer the purpose very well, if the work is properly executed.' Mr. Erskine, after informing Mr. Young that he has now experienced the benefit of these fences for some years,' and that he 'can with great confidence recommend them as superior to all others,' concludes with the following account of the method of erecting them: 'When a new fence is proposed to be made, the surface of the ground of the breadth of the ditch, and likewise for two feet more, should be pared off, to prevent, as much as possible, the weeds and grass from hurting the growth of the young thorns. The ditch should be five feet broad, two feet and a half deep, and one foot broad at the bottom; leave one foot for an edging or scarcement, then dig the earth one spit of a spade for about one foot, and put about three inches of good earth below the thorn, which should be laid nearly horizontal, but the point rather inclining upwards, in order to let the rain drip to the roots; then add a foot of good earth above it; leave three or four inches of a scarcement before another thorn is planted: it must not be directly over the lower one, but about nine inches or a foot to one side of it; then throw a foot of good earth on the thorn, and trample it well down, and level the top of the bank for about three feet and a half for the base of the wall to rest on. The base of the wall should be about nine or ten inches (but not exceed one foot from the thorn). The wall to be about two feet thick at the bottom, and one foot at the top; the cope to be a single stone laid flat, then covered with two sods of turf; the grass of the undermost to be next the wall, and the other sod must have the grass side uppermost; the sods should be of some thickness to retain moisture, so that they may adhere together, and not be easily displaced by the wind; the height of the wall to be two feet and a half, exclusive of the sods, which together should be from four to six inches, by which means the wall would be nearly three feet altogether.' See HEDGES and PALING.

'Next to implements and machinery, and suitable buildings,' says an able writer on this subject in the supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, fences are in most situations indispensable to the profitable management of arable land. They are not only necessary to protect the crops from the live stock of the farm, but often contribute, in no small degree by the shelter they afford, to augment and improve the produce itself. On all arable farms, on which cattle and sheep are pastured, the ease, security, and comfort, which good fences give, both to the owner and the animals themselves, are too evident to require particular notice. And as there are few tracts so rich as to admit of crops being carried off the land for a succession of years, without the intervention of green crops consumed where they grow, fences, of some description or other, can very rarely be dispensed with, even in the most fertile and highly improved districts.' But there is no branch of husbandry so generally mismanaged as this. No district, of any considerable extent, perhaps, can be named, in which one does not see the greater part of what are called fences, not only comparatively useless, but wasteful to the possessor of the lands which they occupy, and injurious both to himself and his neighbours, by the weeds which they shelter. This is particularly the case with thorn hedges, which are too often planted in soils where they can never, by any management, be expected to become a sufficient fence; and which, even when planted on suitable soils, are in many cases so much neglected when young, as ever afterwards to be a nuisance, instead of an ornamental, permanent, and impenetrable barrier, as, with proper training, they might have formed in a few years.

By way of general hints, he adds, "the exposure of the lard should be considered, in order that the fences may give the shelter that is most required:-the form of the field should be such as to render it most accessible from the farm buildings, and that it may be cultivated at the least expense, the lands or ridges not being too short, nor running out into angles at the points where the fence takes a different direction :—and the soil of the enclosure should be as nearly alike throughout as possible, that the whole field may be always under the same kind of crop. It must, in general, be a matter of consequence to have water in every enclosure; but this is too obvious to escape attention.' "The most common fences, of a permanent character, are stone walls and whitethorn hedges. Stone walls have the recommendatior of being an immediate fence; but the disadvantage of going gradually to decay, and of requiring to be entirely rebuilt, in some cases every twenty years, unless they are constructed with lime mortar, which is in many districts much too expensive to be employed in erecting common fences. Whitethorn hedges, on the contrary, though they require several years to become a fence of themselves, may be preserved at very little expense afterwards in full vigor for several generations. It is scarcely necessary to add, that upon wet soils, where hedges are employed as fences, it is of importance that the ditches be drawn in such a direction as to serve the purposes of drains, and also that

they may receive the water from the covered drains that may be required in the fields contiguous. According as the line of the fence is more or less convenient in this respect, the expense of draining may be considerably diminished or increased.'

The expense of enclosing, and, of course, the direction and construction of the fences,' concludes this writer, ought to be undertaken in almost every case by the proprietor, not merely for the sake of relieving the tenant from a burden which may be incompatible with his circumstances and professional duties, but also from a principle of economy on the part of the landlord. Whatever may be the tenant's knowledge and capital, it is not to be expected that his views should extend much beyond his own accommodation during his temporary occupation; whereas the permanent interest of the landlord requires, not so much a minute attention to economy in the first instance, as that the amelioration shall be as complete and as durable as possible. The tenant's outlay on fences must inevitably be returned by a diminution of the yearly rent, and probably with a large profit for the first advance of the money; while, at the same time, that money may be expended in an improvement which is neither so complete nor so lasting as it might have been rendered, had it been done at the expense, and under the direction of the proprietor. But another error of the same kind is probably still more common, and by far more pernicious to landholders. The fences are to be kept in repair by the tenant; which, in so far as regards stone walls, is a stipulation no way objectionable. But it often happens that a landlord, even though he runs a hedge-fence at his own expense, leaves it to be trained up by the tenant without his interference; and the cousequence is, that, in perhaps nine cases out of ten, it never becomes a sufficient fence at all; that the original cost is lost for ever; and that the land which it occupies is not only unproductive, but actually a nuisance. Besides, it is evidently improper to require of a tenant to rear up a good fence, commonly by a greater outlay than was required for forming it, when the half of his lease

perhaps must elapse before he can derive much benefit from it. This mistake on the part of proprietors is probably the principal cause of the badness of hedge-fences; for if they are neglected when the plants are young, if cattle are allowed to make gaps, water permitted to stagnate in the ditch, or weeds to grow unmolested on the face of the bank, no labor or attention afterwards will ever make an equal and strong fence. As it is well known how difficult, or rather impossible, it is to enforce this care by any compulsory covenants, the best plan for both parties is that which is adopted in some districts, where hedges are reared at the mutual expense of landlord and tenant, the thorns, while they require it, being protected by rails, or otherwise, so as to give the tenant all the advantages of a complete fence in the mean time. In this case he cannot justly complain that he pays a share of the expense, and this payment furnishes the strongest motive for preserving the young thorns from damage, and for training them with such care, as to become a complete fence in the shortest possible period.'

Rammed earth, or en pise walls, are very common in France, both as fences and walls for buildings. They have been described at great length in the communications to the Board of Agriculture, and in other works, and tried in various parts of this country with tolerable success, though they are by no means suited either to our moist climate or degree of civilisation. In constructing them the earth is previously pounded, in order to crumble any stones therein; clay is added thereto in a small quantity, about one-eighth part. It is all beaten and mixed up together by repeated blows with a mallet about ten inches broad, and ten or fifteen inches long, and two inches thick. The earth being thus prepared, and slightly wetted, the foundation of the wall is dug; this is laid with stone, and when it is about one foot high above the surface of the ground, planks are arranged on each side, and the space between filled with the earth intended for the wall. It is strongly beaten; and this method is continued successively, till the wall is completed.

6

FENCING, in military exercises, is the art, or science, of making a proper use of the sword, either for attacking an enemy or defending one's self. On this elegant and manly exercise Sir John Sinclair observes, There is no exercise, with a view to health, better entitled to the attention of those who are placed among the higher orders of society, than that of fencing. The positions of the body, in fencing, have for object, erectness, firmness, and balance; and, in practising that art, the chest, neck, and shoulders, are placed in positions the most beneficial to health. The various motions of the arms and limbs, whilst the body maintains its erect position, enble the muscles in general to acquire vigorous