1884.] QUESTION BOX- . 157 



my farm has been to keep a little of everything. In that way 

 I manage to hit it somewhere ; and that is my advice to you. 



Now, sir, in relation to farmers clubbing together and 

 keeping a shepherd to watch their flocks, it will not pay in 

 this stirring section of New England ; but it will pay the 

 farmer to fence his out pastures and pasture them with sheep. 

 That will bring back our old pastures to the condition in 

 which they were when I and many others of these gentlemen 

 present were boys. To-day, those pastures have run up to 

 brush in many sections of our State ; they are running 

 down ; the tax that is paid is small for such land, but if 

 farmers would rise early in the morning, if they have no 

 other time, and fence their land, and keep sheep, they would 

 find it would pay, and it would materially enhance the value 

 of those pastures. They would be worth a hundred per cent, 

 more and produce that amount beyond what they are now 

 producing. 



Then with regard to the dog. I come here as an advocate 

 for the dog as well as the sheep. A few years ago, when 

 the legislature passed the law that is now on the Statute book 

 in relation to dogs, I remember a question put to me by our 

 secretary when we were before that committee, while I was 

 testifying. He asked me if I was there in the interest of dogs 

 or of sheep. I told him I was there in the interest of both. I 

 keep my shepherd dogs and they pay me as well, comparatively 

 as my sheep. Only day before yesterday I gathered my sheep 

 from the hills in separate flocks, and worked from early morn- 

 ing up to the time I left for this convention with my shepherd 

 dogs, and I did more than half a dozen men could have 

 done. I set them to gathering the sheep together to bring 

 them home, and it only required myself with them to gather 

 them in. Now, we have a law to-day to. protect our farmers 

 who are raising sheep, by which the towns are compelled to 

 pay every dollar of damage that is done by dogs. And who 

 pays this money into the treasury ? We pay it ourselves. I 

 pay it on my dogs. If I have any damage done to my sheep 

 by dogs, I do not go to the owner and say, " You must give 



