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ON INCLOSING LAND

SECT. III.

Or INCLOSURES IN LOW ARABLE FARMS.

r he chief purposes of inclosures, in lands of this descrip-tion, are for the due arrangement of crops and pasturage injudicious rotations, and for the protection of the various cropsfrom trespass. If the farms be laid off in suitable sizes, it isa great waste of expence to make the inclosures too small andnumerous. This is likewise productive of interruption to fieldlabour, and retards the winning of grass cut for hay, and pfgrain crops, by preventing the free circulation of air. In ex-tensive low arable farms, oblong inclosures, of from twentyto thirty acres, are generally most approved; and the mosteligible fences in such situations are either stone-walls, ophedges trained close and low ; the latter, when skilfully laidout, are certainly the best on several accounts.

In a farm of this kind, consisting of five hundred acres, itwill generally be found more convenient to have it subdividedinto twenty inclosures of twenty-five acres each, than ten offifty acres. The smaller inclosures are of sufficient size toadmit of being cultivated without inconvenience or interrup-tion j and are more useful and manageable for being manur-ed, or for double rotations. In them likewise, the soils canbe more uniformly arranged and laid together ; and some ofthe fields can be kept in old grass.