is generally
understood. Indeed, to the eyes of a person of taste, a farm or
plantation appears incomplete, without good barn accommodations, as much
as without good household appointments--and without them, no
agricultural establishment can be complete in all its proper economy.

The most _thorough_ barn structures, perhaps, to be seen in the United
States, are those of the State of Pennsylvania, built by the German
farmers of the lower and central counties. They are large, and expensive
in their construction; and, in a strictly economical point of view, are,
perhaps, more costly than is required. Yet, there is a substantial
durability about them, that is exceedingly satisfactory, and, where the
pecuniary ability of the farmer will admit, they may well furnish models
for imitation.

In the structure of the barn, and in its interior accommodation, much
will depend upon the branches of agriculture to which the farm is
devoted. A farm cultivated in grain chiefly requires but little room for
stabling purposes. Storage for grain in the sheaf, and granaries, will
require its room; while a stock farm requires a barn with extensive hay
storage, and stables for its cattle, horses, and sheep, in all climates
which do not admit of such stocks living through the winter in the
field, as is the case in the great grazing districts west of the
Alleghanies. Again, there are wide districts of country where a mixed
husbandry of grain and stock is pursued, which require barns and
outbuildings accommodating both.

It may be well here to remark that many designers of barns, sheds, and
other outbuildings for the accommodation of farm stock, have indulged in
fanciful arrangements for the comfort and convenience of animals, which
are so complicated that when constructed, as they sometimes are, the
practical, common-sense farmer will not use them; and by reason of the
learning which is required for their use, they are altogether unsuitable
for the treatment and use which they generally receive from those who
have the daily care of the stock for which they are intended, and for
the rough usage which they experience from the animals themselves. A
very pretty and plausible arrangement of stabling, feeding, and all the
other requirements of a barn establishment may be thus got up by an
ingenious theorist at the fireside, which will work charmingly as he
dilates upon its good qualities, untried; but, which, when subjected to
experiment, will be