40 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



Now, for the sake of argument, let us assume that it is best 

 for Connecticut that it did get out of the sheep industry. I do 

 not beheve that, but it may be it was best, and may be it is best 

 yet. I suppose there is one cow to every six sheep that has 

 disappeared, and it may be there is a cow for every sheep that 

 has disappeared. I hope there is. I should not be surprised 

 if there are two cows in Connecticut for every sheep that has 

 gone out of the State, so that agriculture has gone along ; not 

 on my line of agriculture — and it is distasteful to me that it has 

 not done so if that be the fact — yet, on the whole, there has 

 probably been an advance in some other line. 



Now, when you go home, if you live out of town, you look 

 out over the fields and you will see, all over Connecticut, more 

 so than in most of the States, weeds that are above the fifteen 

 inches of snow which has fallen. Those weeds have gone to 

 seed, and they have not done anybody any good. I believe 

 that to be true of Connecticut, and any State in the Union where 

 that is the case. It would have been better if the land had been 

 cultivated with some useful plant, if something of that kind 

 had been grown where those weeds grew. Of course, that is 

 self-evident ; but that was not done, and it is not likely to be 

 done nowadays as much as it ought to be done. Therefore, the 

 weeds are there. Now, there is a time in the life of almost 

 every weed that it is good food for sheep. If you will take a 

 flock of sheep out of the barn, which is the worst place a flock 

 ever was put in, by the way, and if you were to drive them out 

 of the ordinary New England barn, and drive them onto one 

 of these fields into the snow, you would find that they would 

 immediately begin to eat these weeds until they got their 

 stomachs full. And another thing about it, those weeds would 

 make good mutton. There is hardly a weed in existence but 

 what, at some time during its life, or at some time during the 

 year, is not good food for sheep. So on the face of it, 

 while there are many of them that are not good food for 

 milch cows, as many of you know, yet there are a great 

 many of them that are excellent food for sheep. So I think 

 you will agree with me that it would be profitable to feed 

 all the weeds that we can, especially in view of the fact 

 that the weeds agree with the sheep, and the sheep take to the 

 weeds. We could not quarrel about that. I believe, further- 

 more, it will be profitable to feed all sorts of plants to sheep. 



