54 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE, [Jan., 



eye, and it was soon established that it was this Httle worm 

 that was doing the damage. Here another thing took place 

 among the farmers of the east. I believe I may be talking 

 to some who had experience with it while I am speaking 

 here today. There seemed to be a kind of panic in the sheep 

 industry about five years ago, created by this disease, and a 

 good many have not gotten over it yet. The sheep began to 

 decline, and the farmers, instead of investigating the trouble 

 as they should, because it was not a difficult matter to locate, 

 became panic-stricken, and many a man went out of the busi- 

 ness. I know that in my own section we had a number of 

 farmers who were knocked out of the business by the worm. 

 The farmers got scared when that worm got to work in the 

 sheep folds, and the result of it was that a good many farms 

 that were profitably engaged in the sheep industry are today 

 sheepless. There is many a man that will laugh and shake 

 his head and say, " I cannot keep sheep," but that is because 

 he has been scared at a difficulty which is not hard to over- 

 come. We are living today in what may be called an age of 

 parasitism, or the parasitic age. If you will stop to consider 

 one moment you will see how it is. Take those apples that 

 are on the table, and I will guarantee that the man who raised 

 them fought parasites in order that he might raise them, and 

 if he had not fought parasites there w^ould not have been any 

 of those apples on the table today nor anywhere else. You 

 cannot raise a hill of potatoes without you use a spray of some 

 kind or something to destroy the bugs. We are in just that 

 condition in the animal kingdom. We cannot raise today 

 anything, either in the animal or vegetable kingdoms, any- 

 thing from a chicken to a lamb, without we get ourselves into 

 a position to fight parasites. If you raise vegetables or fruit, 

 to be successful you must carry on an eternal warfare against 

 bugs and parasites. If you raise animals, from a chicken up 

 to a horse, you must make up your mind that you must prepare 

 yourself to destroy the parasites, or you cannot be successful. 

 We are living in that age. Now that sounds large. It is not. 

 It is true it involves more labor, but it is a hard fight w^hich 

 confronts us, and we cannot raise sheep as we used to raise 

 them. We have got to take care of them and take care of 

 them properly. We must take care of them as the needs of 

 the time demand. That is the hard fact which we cannot 



