180 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



is hardlj a locality in the whole Union, where any kind of farm 

 animals can subsist, that the sheep, if properly attended to, will not 

 give a net profit on the investment, of at least fifty per cent., and 

 that with the ordinary management of farms, it will give some 

 twenty to forty per cent. * * * We cannot glut the market, 

 nor will there be any long time that the market will be depressed 

 below a point of profitable production. On the contrary, it is cer- 

 tain that no farm product goes less below that point, than wool." 

 The last position advanced above, brings to mind the statement in a 

 late journal, that while the sheep of Great Britain had doubled in 

 number, during the last one hundred years, the price of wool per 

 pound, bad also doubled, and the price of mutton had quadrupled. 



A reason has already been given for the reference m.ade in this 

 report to Dr. Browne's essay. It may be thought that too much 

 space has been accorded to that ; perhaps there has. But when it 

 is considered that the Patent Office Reports arc looked upon, by a 

 great many farmers as almost standard works and text books upon 

 Buch agricultural matters as they treat of, and that they are, more 

 or less, in the possession of every neighborhood, it does seem to be 

 a duty incumbent upon those publicly entrusted with a regard for 

 these great interests, that they should not suffer to pass unchal- 

 lenged any new and startling theory, the prevalence of which would 

 very materially change the existing practice; but that all such 

 ought to be fairly investigated upon their own intrinsic merits, and 

 if the new doctrine then appears to be correct, the practice might 

 more reasonably and confidently be adopted, than it could upon a 

 dogmatical assertion of its truth. 



Marine Manures. 



By Samuel Wasson, Franklin. 



With neither time or inclination to indulge in doubtful or specu- 

 lative theories, I can only indite such deductions as have been drawn 

 from experience and observation. Marine manures, in common par- 

 lance, are rock- weed, kelp, eel-grass, muscle-bed, and pogy chum. 

 Rock- weed and kelp grow upon the rocks and ledges of an " open '' 

 shore. Eel-grass, upon the '■' flats," left dry at low water. Muscles 



