Arkansas State Gazette

Live fences their advantage. In those parts of the country where rocks, the materials for stone fences, exist in abundance, the reasons for constructing live hedge fences, may not apply with all their force. Where no rocks are to be found and where the outlay can be afforded, the construction of live fences will be the true economy. - Col. Taylor, whose experience was better than that of most other men on this subject, says: "Live fences consume much less labor (and they consume no wood) than dead." Experience afterwards removed every doubt of the cheapness, practicability and importance of this fence. The errors of neglecting to cultivate the young plants, to crop or manure them, and to plant a second row on the outside of the fence, were for years committed; these were afterwards remedied.

Topping, clipping the lateral branches, culture and filling gaps by bending into them and covering boughs to take root, were also practised.

The method of constructing this fence was the digging of a ditch and forming a ridge about two feet over upon the outside margin of the ditch. The young trees were set in rows on either side of the ridge, the tree upon the one side let to fill up the vacant space of an absent tree upon the other side. The cedars thus set, must be hoed twice a year until they gain the size at which they are to remain. The richer the ground the sooner they will arrive at perfection; in Europe they always manure highly before planting. The cedar (says Col. Taylor,) planted in a good soil, well manured and properly cultivated, cropped at one year old, and annually, so that it rises only as it spreads and clipped at the ends of its branches, those excepted buried at about the middle to fill gaps; will thicken near the ground like box."

Col. Taylor puts an estimate upon the live fences much beyond any previous calculations I have seen. He says "live fences attended with apple trees would, I have no doubt, more than double the population of the eastern sandy portion of the United States;" and this advantage he attributes to the benefit of making a permanent and constant use of atmospherical manure, arising from the security of live enclosures. "By gradually spreading fertility over barrenness, enclosing will increase population to an extent commensurate with its own progress."