Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III FENCES Fences are useful for the purpose of affording shelter to trees, farm and garden crops, horses and other farm stock, to keep them from straying, as guards against the depredations of hares and rabbits, for marking boundary lines, and sometimes for ornament. Any one or all of the above circumstances may be noted when preparing plans for the erection of fences, but it is only necessary here to deal particularly with those which are to be erected in order to serve as shelter to belts of trees, plantations, etc., this being one of the most essential conditions necessary to successful planting in exposed situations. The following will be considered as among the most useful, viz. (i) Dry stone dyke; (2) Turf dyke; (3) Stone and soil; (4) Spar and brushwood; (5) Board or paling ; (6) Hedge. Drv Stone Dyke Dry stone dykes are common as boundary fences to fields and plantations in districts where suitable stones are plentiful and easily procurable. They afford good protection for cattle and, when very closely built, against rabbits. They are not so useful as affording shelter from the winds as good Quickthorn or similar hedges, for the following reason. When the wind in its onward course meets with any solid obstruction, such as a wall, it sweeps over it, the current forming a sharp, short, abrupt curve; but when coming in contact with a hedge its force is broken up, the effect of this being felt some distance beyond. Dry stone dykes are among the most useful and most desirable fences that can be devised to afford shelter to newly planted hedges, and to nurse them up until they reach the top. When they are extensively used around fields instead of hedges, they are not usually considered very ornamental objects in the landscape, but when placed around...