SHEEP HUSBANDKY. 61 



The unfenced lands of this county are not in nearly so barren a 

 condition as the Massachusetts pastures. We may therefore stock 

 them with sheep in the confidence that in a few years they will 

 become valuable for pasturage for cows and even for tillage. 



Let me name one more advantage we shall derive from sheep 

 keeping— the supply of wholesome meat as an article of ordinary 

 diet in our families. The annual slaughtering of the wether lambs 

 and of the older sheep to keep the flock in its most profitable con- 

 dition will supply annually to each keeper of fifty sheep, from 

 thirty to fifty carcases to go into the market and return in cash or 

 be consumed in the family. Our butchers charge us from 1 to 11 

 cents for lamb through the summer and fall, and while pelts are 

 worth what they now are, I know that at four cents for the meat, 

 good lambs will pay $2 1-2 to $3 each to the farmer. Then how 

 much more wholesome or palatable upon your tables would mutton 

 be, than the perpetual fried pork which forms so much of your 

 diet. Three quarters of our households are women and children ; 

 I cannot believe that either have a relish for salted pork, save as 

 they acquire it by obstinate use, as men learn to love tobacco. I 

 believe the taste of these portions of our families, and the health 

 of all would be consulted in the substitution of wholesome mutton 

 for fat pork, which might go to market and take the place of the 

 poor but high priced Ohio pork, upon which we lumber and fish, 

 and upon which so many families subsist. I once asked an 

 Englishman by whose side I was laboring, who was boasting of 

 English mutton, as the natives of that island are apt to boast of 

 everything pertaining to it, "How do you get the sheepy taste out 

 of it, and he answered with a grunt, " Don't loant to get it out, that's 

 ivhat we like.'' And he was all in the fashion, for mutton has fair- 

 ly eclipsed the roast beef in old England in the choice of epicures ; 

 and when the champions of international pugilism went into train- 

 ing to put themselves in highest condition, they fed upon rare 

 mutton moistened with ale. Kev. Henry Colmau in his work on 

 European Agriculture says, " we I think, as a people, have yet to 

 acquire a taste for mutton. In this respect we differ altogether 

 from the English, with whom, in spite of all we hear about " the 

 roast beef of old England," mutton seems everywhere the preferred 

 dish. 



As to the management of sheep, if I had prepared myself to give 

 advice, as I have not, the limits of this address will not permit me 



