FENCE

Any continuous line of obstacle interposed by art between one portion of the surface of land and another for the purpose of separation or exclusion. The kind of obstacle or material differs according to the animals which are to be separated, excluded, or confined, and the nature of the soil and situation. All fences are either live or dead, or a compound of these. Live fences are hedges; that is, rows of shrubs placed close together, and pruned on the sides, so as to fbrm a sort of living wall. Dead fences are either stone walls, mounds of earth, or structures of wood or of other materials raised above the ground's surface, or upon ditches excavated in it. The latter are sometimes filled with water. Mixed fences are those in which some kind of dead fence is used with some kind of live fence; for example, a ditch with a bank of earth on one side, or a ditch with a wall or a hedge on one.side; the latter the commonest of all fences. The introduction.of fences into agriculture was about as great an improvement in the progre of that art, as that of the principle of the division of labour into the art of manufacture. [s. 458]