■ SECRETARY'S REPORT. 27 



Stock husbandry, (including the dairy,) should be the prominent 

 feature of farming in Maine. By making it such, farmers will be 

 enabled the more readily to improve their farms, so that thus we 

 can scarcely conceive of a limit to our capabilities in this respect. 



Our State is well adapted to sheep husbandry ; some portions of 

 it peculiarly so. Probably no branch of farming yields a larger 

 return for the capital invested and the attention bestowed than the 

 keeping of sheep. It is somewhat surprising that our farmers 

 have bestowed so little attention upon it. The experience of the 

 older and more advanced agricultural nations goes to show that 

 the keeping of sheep is indispensable to a good system of hus- 

 bandry even among their densest population and on their highest 

 priced land. And here allow me to extract from the preliminary 

 report of the census of 1860, where in treating upon sheep, it is 

 said, " they afford as much food for man in proportion to their con- 

 sumption, as any other domestic animals. They are believed to 

 return more fertilizing matter to the soil. In addition to these 

 things, they, alone furnish wool. England proper has about five 

 hundred and ninety to the square mile. The United States proper, 

 (exclusive of territories,) have about forty -eight to the square 

 mile." 



In our own State there were returned by the assessors of three 

 hundred and fourteen towns and plantations 334,820 sheep, which 

 would give about ten to a square mile. But inasmuch as about 

 two-fifths of the municipal officers in the State thought the matter 

 of too little consequence for them to trouble themselves to make 

 returns, — upon the supposition of our Secretary made in connec- 

 tion with the report of the returns, that they represented about 

 three-fourths of our farmers, and productive acres, and allowing 

 the proportion to hold good in those places from which no returns 

 were received, we should then have 446,429, being about thirteen 

 and one-half to a square mile, compared with the population less 

 than *I1 per cent. 



In view of the foregoing facts, will any one presume to say that 

 Maine has begun to develop her capabilities in this branch of hus- 

 bandry.^ On the contrary have not our farmers paid too little 

 attention to this matter for their own interest and the good of the 

 State ? 



In order to develop our agricultural capabilities, we need good 

 home markets and an easy transit from the interior and northern 

 portion of our State. 



