Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed, Volume 1 (of 2): A Biographical and Critical Study Based Mainly on his own WritingsBruce, Wiliam Cabell
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Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed, Volume 1 (of 2): A Biographical and Critical Study Based Mainly on his own Writings
Bruce, Wiliam Cabell
Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790
Col. John Schuyler, one of the owners, has a deer park
five miles round, fenced with cedar logs, five logs
high, with blocks of wood between. It contains a
variety of land, high and low, woodland and clear.
There are a great many deer in it; and he expects in a
few years to be able to kill two hundred head a year,
which will be a very profitable thing. He has likewise
six hundred acres of meadow, all within bank.
The fact that Col. John Schuyler had six hundred acres of meadow land
within bank was not lost on Eliot; for later Franklin writes to him again
promising to obtain from Colonel Schuyler a particular account of the
method pursued by him in improving this land. "In return," said Franklin,
"(for you know there is no Trade without Returns) I request you to procure
for me a particular Acct of the manner of making a new kind of Fence we saw
at Southhold, on Long Island, which consists of a Bank and Hedge." With the
exactitude of an experimental philosopher, he then details the precise
particulars that he desired, disclosing in doing so the fact that
Pennsylvania was beginning in many places to be at a loss for wood to fence
with. This statement need not surprise the reader, for in his _Account of
the New-Invented Pennsylvanian Fireplaces_, published some six years
before, Franklin informs us that wood, at that time the common fuel, which
could be formerly obtained at every man's door, had then to be fetched near
one hundred miles to some towns, and made a very considerable article in
the expense of families. From this same essay, we learn that it was deemed
uncertain by Franklin whether "Pit-Coal" would ever be discovered in
Pennsylvania! In another letter from Franklin to Eliot, along with some
items about Peter Collinson, "a most benevolent, worthy man, very curious
in botany and other branches of natural history, and fond of improvements
in agriculture, &c.," Hugh Roberts' high opinion of Eliot's "Pieces,"
ditching, the Academy, barometers, thermometers and hygrometers, Franklin
has some sprightly observations to make upon the love of praise. Rarely, we
venture to say, have more winning arguments ever been urged for the
reversal of the world's judgment upon any point.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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