Sheep versus Cattle. 555 



pliilosopliers tell us, to an ounce what it did when Adam was a farmer. 

 A cigar smoked, if all could be again collected, would be the exact 

 weight of the pennyworth of tobacco. If these broad principles 

 had been kept in view in ancient times, when Carthago was the 

 gi'anary of Eome, and its marshes aiforded food for man, instead of 

 pestilence, I venture to assert that they woidd never have been ex- 

 hausted. I therefore refer to these princiidcs in this my conservative 

 attempt to prove that Britain may help herself even mider the present 

 direful dispensation of Providence. 



Mr. Fkere : In speaking of lamb gates, Mr. Torr mentioned revolving 

 side bars ; I would suggest that a revolving top bar would be found 

 serviceable, jiarticularly with ram lambs. As to the general subject 

 before us, I profess to be a sheep farmer with a dry soil and climate ; it 

 has been my study to increase my stock ; and my flock is now, I believe, 

 nearly half as large again as that which in old times it was imagined 

 that the farm could possibly carry, for I keep 1.5 score breeding ewes, 

 whereas my right of sheep-walk has been restricted to 11 score, as 

 the outside number that could fairly be " levant and couchant " on 

 the farm. 



To accomplish this object I grow more root crops, and pay si^ccial 

 attention to autumn cultivation ; take out the mamu'c in winter for 

 roots, and sow the earlier green croj)S on the wintered surface soil. 

 The bulk of my farm (managed on the fom-coiu'se) is so ordered 

 that two long shifts, one of seeds, the other of roots, are always 

 side by side. Of the increased root crop nearly one third is drawn 

 and consumed on the sound dry layer close by. ^Vith an increased 

 stock of sheep, and especially lambs, one obstacle is always encountered 

 — the evil that arises from over-stocking. 



And here, if I may digress for a moment, it would be to caution 

 those who thought that they could substitute a large for a small stock 

 of poultry with advantage, forgetting the evil of the land becoming 

 tainted. 



In order to keep a larger nmnber of sheep, I naturally have recourse 

 to a larger consumption of straw as well as of corn. My barley straw 

 produces the best straw chaff ; that which is cut by steam-jiower (with 

 Maynard's cutter) being best adapted to sheep, as being shorter and 

 softer to the touch. Instead of growing 100 acres of wheat and 100 

 acres of barley, I grow 140 acres of barley and GO of wheat. Thus 

 I have only 60 acres of wheat to sow in the autumn ; and horse 

 labour, which under the old system would have been appropriated in 

 the autumn to the wheat-crop, is now used in preparing for the earlier 

 root crops, early rape, mangold, and kohl-rabi. 



Thus I had 40 acres not broken up in the autumn for wheat. Upon 

 that clean lair from one-fourth to one-third of the root crop would 

 be fed, even perhaps by younger sheep, dm-ing October, November, and 

 December. At the end of December it was stirred by a cultivator to 

 as small a depth as might be, and worked fine before the main winter 

 frosts came. It should be in that state during the month of January 

 probably, while the manure was being carted on for the mangold 

 in the time of frost, and after it had been thus exposed to frost, 



