SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 53 



because hay or provender is cheaper in Maine, for our extensive 

 lumbering operations and poorer agriculture make both considera- 

 bly dearer, but because the openness of the winters on our coast 

 shortens the foddering season. 



I find m the Appendix of Mr. Morrell's boob, reports as to the 

 length of the foddering season in different States, and the quantity 

 of hay necessary to winter a specified number of sheep. None of 

 them put the foddering season at less than 150 days. In Pennsyl- 

 vania even, one sheepkeeper states that the foddering season is 

 from five to six months. 



I find from the statements I have received from persons in this 

 county, that an average foddering season here is 150 days, though 

 some feed only 130 days, and careful sheepkeepers say they would 

 not feed so long as 150 days if they had suitable pastures. These 

 statistics show that Washington county labors under no disadvan- 

 tages in respect to wintering sheep, in comparison with the great 

 wool-growing regions of the United States. Nor is the expense of 

 shelter an extra expense, for as far South and West as Ohio, all the 

 wool-growers insist that winter shelter is essential to the success- 

 ful keeping of sheep, 



Washington county possesses another advantage for sheep hus- 

 bandry in the abundance of cheap, poor and rocky land. We have 

 about stripped three tiers of townships of their timber, and the fires 

 that have followed in the wake of our logging, and wood and piles 

 and lath gleaning, have denuded our coast, until it is far less fur- 

 nished with forest, than are the rich farming regions of New York 

 and of the Kennebec river in our own State. The great fires of 

 1851 I think quite changed the aspect and growth of many of our 

 townships. Lubec, Trescott, Cutler, Machiasport, Jonesport were 

 then extensively burnt over, and pasture grasses, moss and bushes 

 have taken the place of timber-yielding forests over hundreds of 

 acres. Machias, East Machias, Jonesboro', Columbia, Steuben 

 and Harrington suffered from earlier fires. In all these towns 

 there are thousands of acres for the most part unfenced, upon which 

 natural herbage grows sufficient to feed many thousand sheep. 

 There is a tract in Trescott, another embracing the principal sur- 

 face of Jonesport, Jonesboro', with parts of Machias and Whitney- 

 ville, having no saleable value, which sheep instead of exhausting 

 would slowly fertilize. 



Are such lands adapted to sheep ? I answer, from all I have 



