FENCES. When a park is inclosed to ktep in deer and game, the best fence is a stone or brick wall, well built with lime mortar ; but, as this is expensive where stone and lime are not at hand, the common park paling is more frequently met with. This is composed of posts and rails of oak morticed and pinned to gether, and split pales of the same material nailed upon these in an upright position. Sometimes the pales are nailed at a distance from each other, which makes the open paled fence, and the pales are then generally cut to a point at top. Wood fences on the continent are generally of ruder construction.
In wild mountain passes in Scotland and Ireland it is usual to separate the properties of different individuals or that of parishes by rough stone walls put together without any mortar. The materials are generally at hand, and a rough and efficient fence is made with out much labour. Where stones are not at band, a high bank of earth faced with sods of grass is substituted for a wall. Furze seed is often sown on it, and soon forms an excellent fence, which, by proper care and clipping, will last a long time. But the most common kind of fence for fields is the hedge and ditch, the bank being raised with the sods and earth taken out of the ditch, and the hedge planted in the side of the bank towards the ditch, or on the top. Where they are not required as drains, it is a great waste of land to have any ditches, and a simple hedge planted on the surface of the soil is much to be preferred. Of
all fences, a live hedge, which is carefully planted, and kept properly cut and trimmed when it is grown up, is by far the best.
When a fence is required within sight of a dwelling, a deep ditch is sometimes dug, and a fence placed at the bottom of it. This is called a sunk fence. Sometimes a wall is built against a perpendicular side of a ditch, and some very light fence is placed obliquely out wards near the top of it, and level with the ground. This is called a ha-ha fence, a name given to it from the surprise excited in a per son unacquainted with it, when he suddenly finds himself on the top of a wall with a deep ditch before him. A variety of light fences of iron have been invented for the same purpose : some of these are fixed, and others moveable: some have upright pieces of cast iron as posts let into oak blocks sunk in this ground, and rods of wrought iron passing through holes in I the uprights : some have wire for the same purpose. But the most common iron fence is composed of.separate wrought-iron hurdles, which may be moved at pleasure, and are kept together by screwed pins and nuts.