60 SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 



lands, by the extirpation of troublesome busbes and briars, and 

 noxious weeds. They feed upon all such with avidity and fairly 

 destroy them. Their digestion of what they eat is so perfect, that 

 no weed seeds, after passing this ordeal, retain their germinating 

 power." Recurring to the same subject in his Report for 1859, he 

 gives these facts : "I saw it recently stated that in Lynn some 

 land was bought and enclosed about eight years ago, a hundred 

 acres of which would not afford a cow a living. Only as many 

 sheep were first pastured upon it as it could carry, and the num- 

 ber was increased by degrees, so that the third year three hundred 

 were well kept on two hundred acres. On the parts most closely 

 fed, the wild roses, whortleberry and blackberry bushes, and wood- 

 wax were almost entirely killed, and there was a very good sward 

 of blue grass, red-top and white clover." The editor of the New 

 England Farmer, writing from Hingham a year or two since, said : 

 " Some of the finest examples are afforded here of the effects of 

 feeding sheep upon pastures that have become exhausted of nutri- 

 tious grasses, and grown up to briars bushes, brakes and moss. I 

 have seen pastures to-day that had become almost worthless, but 

 are now green and smiling as a lawn, with every inch among the 

 rocks covered with the richest pasture grasses, and not a black- 

 berry vine, wild rose bush, mullen, or other worthless plant in 

 sight. The sward does not seem compact and bound, but loose 

 and porous, and filled with the most healthy and vigorous roots. 

 The sheep grazing upon these pastures afford ample evidence of 

 the richness and luxuriance of the grasses upon which they feed. 

 These examples, with similar ones that I have met in other places 

 widely remote, would seem to shed light upon the perplexing 

 question so often asked. How sliall I reclaim my old pastures? All 

 over New England there are thousands of acres producing little or 

 nothing, that might be renovated by the introduction of sheep upon 

 them, while the profit from the sheep themselves, I believe, will be 

 larger than from the same amount of money invested in cows. I 

 have been told of an instance where a hundred acre pasture fed 

 scantily only 12 sheep and 6 cows the first year, but on the second 

 summer fed well 20 sheep and 12 cows, and continued to increase 

 in fertility until more than double this number were well fed up- 

 on it."* 



* Report of the Secretary of the Board of Agriculture of Maine for 1859. 



