[E.B. O'Callaghan (1849)] The Director General and Council of New Netherland daily hear great complaints that the posts, rails, clapboards, and other fencing, made with great cost and trouble of the inhabitants, (for the preserva-tion of the crops) around their sowed lands and gardens, are stolen during both night and day, the effect of which is that the cattle come in and destroy the crops, which discourages future planting and sowing, and we also fear that it will happen that in consequence of all the lands and gardens being bare of fencing during the coming winter, the sowed grain will not flourish, and that next season the crops will not be worth mowing : Therefore the Lord Director General and Council notify the Burgomasters and Schepens of their Towns not to allow and expressly to forbid injuries of this kind, and they also hereby notify all of what state or condition they may be, that they are hereby warned and expressly forbid from this time forth, not to make bare or strip any gardens, sowed, or planted places, of posts, rails, clapboards, or other fencing, on pain when found doing the same in part or in whole, for the first offence of being whipped and branded, and for the second offence of being hung with a cord till death follows, without favour to any person : and whoever after the date hereof shall give information of any person guilty of robbing the land of posts, rails, or clapboards, shall be rewarded therefor and his name concealed : every one is hereby warned.