SECRET ART'S REPORT. 109 



ciently indicated. Wide tracts, wliicli now produce only coarse and 

 inferior vegetation, and scant at that, may be easily and profitably 

 redeemed in this way. 



One principal reason why the profits of this branch of rural 

 economy have not been duly estimated, is believed to bo owing to 

 the absence of accurate accounts, a besetting sin of farmers gen- 

 erally. The aggregate returns yielded by sheep has thus come to 

 be underrated ; for instance, when a farmer sells a yoke of steers, 

 which for three or four years have been steadily increasing in cost, 

 at a fair price, and one yielding a moderate profit, it looks in his 

 eyes a round sum, — something of a pile — and is duly appreciated. 

 But if, instead of these, he keeps during the same years just so 

 many sheep as will cost an equal sum, he often fails to estimate 

 fully the returns which they make, if not quite so regularly as the 

 semi-annual dividends on bank stock, yet in the two payments each 

 year which they actually do make, in the clip of wool and the lambs 

 annually dropped. 



The same sum, received in the course of three or four years, and 

 in six or eight separate instalhiaents, is apt to be thouglit less of 

 than the gross sum at the end of the term ; and yet, in fact, it is 

 rather more, reckoning interest, and not less. 



We may learn a useful lesson as to the value and intimate connexion 

 of sheep with a profitable husbandry, from the results of experience 

 in England, where their extensive introduction has worked a vast 

 improvement, and where they have been steadily gaining in estima- 

 tion ever since Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, a farmer, lawyer, judge, 

 and the father of agricultural literature in that country, wrote his 

 " Booke of Ilousbandrie," (A. D. 1532,) in which he says : " Shepe 

 in myne opinion is the most profitablest cattell that any man can have." 



The rearing of sheep in England is now considered the most 

 important of agricultural pursuits, and there are many farms scat- 

 tered throughout Great Britain, where scarcely any other stock is 

 now kept. 



"As if symbolical of the importance which the nation attaches 

 to this production, the Lord Chancellor of England, as President of 

 the House of Lords, sits upon a 'wool-sack,' (so called.") 



Some have attributed the profit of sheep in England to the mild- 

 ness of their winters, and deem the case widely different here, but 



