108 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



importance. The demand in the large cities has always been good, 

 and the increasing facilities of communication with their maikets 

 make tliem accessible to a dogree formerly quite unknown. Among 

 the advantages of sheep husbandry may be enumerated the following : 



They demand less care and attention during the busiest part of 

 the farmer's season than any other stock. They leave the barn 

 before he is most occupied, and return after his severest labors are 

 over, and later than any other. 



The fecundity of the sheep is scarcely equalled by any other 

 domestic animal. They are available for the shambles from the 

 period of early youth to extreme old age, and if they die, the -wool 

 and pelt insure against total loss. Another point worthy of consid- 

 eration is, that sheep will thrive upon, and enable the grower to reap 

 good returns from, much of our land which is unfit for tillage, and 

 not so well adapted to the requirements of other stock. "We have 

 thousands upon thousands of hilly and roaky acres, where sheep will 

 thrive and fatten, and yield a better profit than can be obtained from 

 them in any other way. 



The sheep, too, of all domestic animals, is the least dainty in its 

 tastes and the easiest fed, eating freely, it is said, of a hundred 

 different species of plants which are refused by the horse and the 

 ox. They are thus of great utility in cleansing foul lands by the 

 extirpation of troublesome bushes and briars, and noxious Aveeds. 

 Nothing C(j;nes amiss to sheep ; they feed upon all such with avidity, 

 and fairly destroy them. Their digestion of what they eat is so 

 complete and thorough, that no Aveed seeds, after passing this ordeal, 

 retain any germinating power. Bssides all this, it is the animal 

 which derives the greatest benefit from the food which it consumes, 

 and at the same time gives the most active and enriching manure to 

 fertilize the hind, and this, when at pasture, it scatters not only 

 copiously, but with remarkable evenness, over the land, thus aiding 

 the introduction of choice and delicate grasses, while horses and 

 neat cattle, on the contrary, drop their excrements in large deposits, 

 which tend to the destruction of the more delicate sorts of feed, and 

 the growth of such as is rank and coarse. Thus sheep may be of 

 decided advantage to dairy pastures. 



The reasons why, and the wny in which, an increased culture of 

 slieep may avail to the restoration of lost fertility, are thus sufli- 



