FENCES, in agriculture, serve the twofold purpose of inclosing animals on pasture grounds, and of protecting land from animals. They are formed of a great variety of materials, and of very different structure. In countries where wood or stones are scarce, more especially where they have been long settled, hedges, formed of various kinds of plants, are common. These, when well kept and managed, give a clothed and picturesque appearance to the landscape. The hawthorn is the favorite hedge-plant in this country. Sec HEDGES.
When stones are used as F., they are built as walls. The form and mode of build ing varies with the nature and quality of the stones, and the degree of taste and nicety required. Aberdeenshire forms it walls or dikes surrounding its fields with the granite boulders that are strewed over the surface of the country. The graywacke affords slaty stones, which give the walls their peculiar form in other parts, and so with the various kinds of sandstone.
In new countries, where wood is abundant, the F. are all of this material. The snake fence, named from its zigzag form, is made by merely laying the ends of trees above each other, and requires no other means of fixing. As wood becomes more valuable, it is made into stobs and rails. The stobs are driven into the ground from two to three yards apart, and from four to five rails are nailed across, according to the purpose it is meant to serve. The stob and rafter fence is made by driving the stobs from 3 to 4 in. apart, and binding the whole by a rafter or rail nailed across the top. This is one of the strongest of wooden F., but requires more material than the other.
Iron or wire fencing has come much into use of late. Vast stretches of waste land in this country, as well as pastures in Australia, have been inclosed by means of wire-fencing. Strong wires are stretched on posts firmly secured in the ground, from 100 to 200 yards or more apart. Intermediate or lighter posts are put in at from two to three yards' dis tance. After the wires are fully stretched, they are fixed to the smaller posts; when of wood, by means of staples, or threaded through when of iron.
Law regarding Fences.—In England, it is held to be the duty of the occupier of lands to repair and uphold F., and not of the landlord; and without any special agreement, the landlord may maintain an against. the tenant for not doing so. Though a tenant from year to year is not bound to put the F. and other buildings on his farm into repair, he must not do anything that amounts to waste, or to a breach of the rules of good husbandry. He cannot cut and sell hedgerows, or if he does so, he must make up the hedges and F. according to the course of good husbandry. "If there be a quick set fence of white thorn, and the tenant shut it up, or suffer it to be destroyed, this is destruction; but cutting up quicksets is not waste, for it preserves the spring."—Wood fall On Landlord and Tenant, pp. 456, 457, and cases cited. Where, in answer to a decla
ration against a tenant for not using premises in a husbandlike manner in repairing F., on his implied obligation to do so, the tenant pleaded that the fence became out of repair by natural decay, and that there was no proper wood which he had a right to cut for repairing the F., and that the plaintiff ought to have set out proper wood for the purpose of repairs, which he had neglected to do, the plea was held to be bad, because it did not aver any request to the plaintiff so to do, or a custom of the country in that respect.—Whitefield es. Weedon, 2 Chit. 685. By 7 and 8 Geo. IV. c. 29, ss. 23, 40, 44, the destruction of F. is declared to be punishable summarily with a fine of not more than £5; or in the case of a deer-park fence, with £50. The statute is limited to England.
In Scotland, the landlord is held bound to put the fences on the farm in due repair on the entry of the tenant, independently of any stipulatian in the lease; whilst the tenant must maintain them and leave them, with the exception of ordinary tear and wear, in the state in which they were given over to him. But the landlord is not enti tled to increase the burdens of his tenant by erecting new fences not stipulated for, unless they be march-fences, which he may be compelled to erect by contiguous proprietors, and half the expense of which he must share with them, under the act 1661, c. 41, rati fied by 1685, c. 39, of the existence of which the tenant is presumed to have been aware when he entered to the farm. As regards fences erected spontaneously by the tenant, the rule is that if, being entitled to remove them, he allows them to remain, he must leave them in repair; but if they are fixtures (q v.), which he is not entitled to remove, lie is not bound to repair them. It is optional to the landlord, at the termination of the lease, to order removal of fences and other buildings voluntarily built by the tenant, except in the case of palings and movable fences, or to prevent their being removed without offering any indemnification.—Hunter, Landlord and Tenant, ii. p. 208. As buildings, fences, and other ameliorations made by the tenant, are supposed to be made for his own sake, and not for the sake of the landlord, he has no claim for the moneys which he may have expended for such purposes, at the end of the lease; except under a special stipulation to that effect. But if the tenant's occupation be terminated abruptly, and more particularly if his lease excludes assignees and sub-tenants, it is equitable that the landlord, getting the benefit beyond what was contemplated by the tenant, the family or the creditors of the latter should be allowed a proportion of the value of the ameliorations. Bell's Prin,cip. s. 1255. The cases in which meliorations are or are not removable will be explained under fixtures (q.v.). For the law as to fences in regard to trespassing, see TRESPASS.