1906.] ESSENTIALS IN FUTURE SHEEP BREEDING. 49 



of New York I can pick out the farms by the weeds where 

 sheep have been kept all these years. You can tell where they 

 are. 



I have been for some years engaged in the farmers' in- 

 stitute work in the State of New York, and at every meeting 

 the vital question that comes up in the dairy section is how to 

 regulate the pastures that cannot be tilled. Weeds of various 

 kinds are growing, coming into them continuously, and the 

 c[uestion has been, what are we to do? What is the answer? 

 Why the answer is, keep a few sheep. Now I know that some 

 men within the hearing of my voice say they will starve out 

 the cows, but are you, my friends, so sure of that? If a man 

 has over-stocked his pasture, put a few sheep upon it, put 

 them on with the cattle, and I will guarantee you they will 

 come out ahead. If a man will keep a few sheep with his 

 dairy herd of cattle he will be surprised to find that they will 

 make a more luxurious pasture for them. I know that because 

 I have had that on my own farm. I have tried to study these 

 matters, and I have found by experience that a few sheep 

 running wilfi my cows upon the farm will take the weeds out 

 of my pasture and clean them up so as to allow other grasses 

 grow up that are relished by the cattle. I have improved 

 my own farm in this way, and I could show you a pasture 

 that has been occupied with sheep and cattle side by side run- 

 ning together for the last twenty years. It is as fine a pasture 

 as you could find anywhere, and that has been brought about 

 largely in that way. 



Now before we talk about the essentials let me say that 

 we sometimes can learn things by taking a back sight, as sur- 

 veyors say ; or as civil engineers say in running out country 

 lines we will take a back sight to know whether we are going 

 in the right direction or not. Now let us take a little back 

 sight of this industry. What has brought about this condition 

 of sheep culture today in this country? There is not a man 

 who has a flock of sheep today, I believe, but what will bear 

 me out in the assertion that if he has taken care of those sheep 

 he has made some profit for all the time that the flock has been 

 in existence.- Now I am not going outside of the United 

 States only as far as to say that in Australia, a great sheep 

 country, owing to the curse of rabbits and the curse of locusts, 

 large flocks of sheep have been decimated. The same has 



Agr. — 4. 



