Sheep versus Cattle. 553 



question of frost or uo frost ; but it is not material beyond the saving 

 of straw. If frosli ashes cannot bo obtained, straw must be used upon 

 the okl ones. When the feediuf; is over, they arc useful, mixed with 

 superphosphate, to apjily by the drill to the green crops. 



It must not be supposed that the sheds necessary for this purpose 

 are expensive erections. A thatched roof upon posts five feet high, 

 the spaces between the posts on the north side being filled in with two 

 rows of wattled hm-dles, one on each side of the posts, and raiximed 

 between with straw, is all that is required. 



Such is the practicable experience of Mr. Eandall with a large flock 

 of sheep on a very cold clay soil, a soil that is a good deal below the 

 average of land which may be termed sheep land. Of course, I need 

 hardly say he has not a large number of cattle ; but ho has a 

 considerable lot of sheep — sometimes from GoO to 800 feeding sheep. 



Here let me put on what I call the crowning point of wool, now tlie 

 staple, not only in a mill but on a farm. Sheep, as it Avcre, standing 

 still, grow wool ; and at anything like late prices of this article, 

 and under a certain zone of latitude, it is doubtful whether a wether 

 could not be more than self-supporting, by yielding annually his 

 fleece, and thus pay a profit for two succeeding summers. This I 

 advance not against early return and maturity, but to illustrate my 

 views as to the advantages of sheep under favourable circumstances. 

 To take another point, a friend of mine, who has had 18 sheep of me 

 during the past 18 years, and has engaged the 19th ram to jiut on his 

 old time-honom"ed Lincoln flock, realized at the April fair of Lincoln 

 5/. each for 200 hoggets, barring a '" tenner " returned for luck. 

 Well, now you have here, say three hoggets, making 151., versus a 

 very good year-and-a-half-old steer, or, in many counties, a two 

 years old. Just, for one moment, see the great disj^arity in value. 

 Referring to use of artificials ; these hoggets, of course, had all they 

 liked, and a little more, in their feeding-troughs : my bullocks had 

 not quite their fill. Still, I freely admit, the profit is on the 

 Improved Liucolns, and not on the Shorthorns, or any of the other 

 cattle tribes. 



I was going to say something about the soil on which wool grows 

 best. On my own farm I find that I can grow better wool on some 

 jxjrtions of it than on others. In the south of Lincolnshire, about 

 Si^ilsby, wool grows in a most extraordinary manner ; if you go 

 further north, say as far as Fifeshire, or fui'thcr south than the 

 English Channel, the quality of the wool falls ofi". It then becomes 

 hair or moss. The valuable fine lustre wool is pretty nearly confined 

 to a few degrees of latitude, not only in England, but nearly all over 

 the world. So that the space being limited, there is little or no 

 danger of wool ever glutting the market any more. The present 

 imjust warfare, however, is against its price; but on this I will not 

 dwell. Wool will ever bear a great value ; and even if 800 sheep be 

 kept where 600 were kept formerly, there arc 800 men, and far more, 

 perhaps, in comparison with the GOO, who now wear a good broad- 

 cloth coat instead of miserable fustian ; and so it will continue to be. 

 And let me add to this requirement of the outer man, that the inner 



