SECRETARY'S REPORT. 151 



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 extirpa- 

 tion of troublesome bushes and briars and noxious weeds. Nothing 

 comes 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 weed seeds after passing this ordeal retain any 

 germinating power. Besides 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 land, 

 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 con- 

 trary, 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." 



In Massachusetts much attention has been given to this method 

 of improving pastures. I saw it recently stated that in Lynn some 

 land was bought and enclosed about eight years ago, "a hundred 

 acres of which would not afford a cow a living." Only as many sheep 

 were first pastured upon it as it could carry, and the number in- 

 creased by degrees so that the third year three hundred sheep were 

 well kept upon two hundred acres. Mr. Sanford Howard who 

 visited it then said it presented a striking contrast to its previous 

 appearance. " On the parts most closely fed, the wild roses, whor- 

 tleberries and blackberry bushes and wood wax were almost entirely 

 killed, and there was a very good sward of blue grass, redtop and 

 white clover." The editor of the New England Farmer writing 

 lately from Hingham, says : " Some of the finest examples are 

 afforded here of the effects of feeding sheep upon pastures that have 

 become exhausted of nutritious grasses and grown up to briars, 

 bushes, brakes and moss. I have seen pastures to-day that had 

 become almost worthless, but now green and smiling as a lawn, with 

 every inch among the rocks covered with the richest pasture grasses, 

 and not a blackberry vine, wild rose bush, mullen or other worthless 

 plant in sight. The sward does not seem compact and sound, but 

 loose and porous, and filled with the most healthy and vigorous roots. 

 The sheep grazing upon these pastures afford ample evidence of the 



