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locusts—hatched and commenced depredations upon our wheat, which has suf- 
fered tremendously. Many fields will not be worth cutting. Some fields of 
corn are badly thinned, and we fear that when the wheat has matured they will 
attack the corn with renewed vigor. Potatoes in some places are completely 
stripped, and our gardens are eaten through and through. 
Our correspondent from Richardson county, Nebraska, writes that the grass- 
hoppers have destroyed nearly all the crop in that county, and are still at work. 
Another correspondent, writing from Douglass county, Kansas, says the grass- 
hoppers or locusts have been doing much damage in that vicinity to all kinds 
of vegetation. 
DISEASE AMONG CATTLE. 
Washington county, Nebraska—A disease has prevailed in this county 
among cattle, called the “black leg.” Those attacked are invariably very 
early calves in the fall or common spring calves, at or near a year old, and always 
those in best condition and most promising in the lot. The first intimation of 
the disease is a slight lameness in one leg, and in about twenty-four hours the 
ealf is dead, without any disfiguration or coloring until after death, when the leg 
turns black and appears in a high state of putrifaction. Nothing has yet, to 
my knowledge, been found to arrest or in the least to alleviate the disorder. A 
preventive has been said to exist in simply giving to the herd of calves during 
the fall and spring a mixture of salt and sulphur regularly. The disease is 
fast disappearing, but in former years nearly one-fifth of all the calves died of 
‘black leg.” 
VERMONT RAMS WANTED. 
Randolph county, North Carolina—We have no sheep in this part of the 
country but natives. ‘The cost of keeping per head forty cents; yield of wool 
one and one-half pounds per head. Sheep are more numerous here now than 
before the war. O that some one of those rich gentlemen of Vermont that 
have so many of those wonderful Merinos would be pleased to donate a ram to 
some one or more persons here in order to improve our native breed. By so 
doing his name would ever be held in grateful remembrance by the people. 
COST OF KEEPING SHEEP IN THE SOUTH. 
Union county, South Carolina—lt costs very little to keep the sheep we have 
here. I will state some facts in regard to my own little flock. I wintered 
twenty-two. These sheltered only on two occasions; once for a week or ten 
days in January, when snow was on the ground, and once during a cold rain. 
I fed them about two months. The cost was as follows: 
Twelve bushels cotton seed at forty cents=...-.--....sessaneedad - $4 80 
Ral erone: Gemma Clo. vote ee ae LL 2 JUL ee 1 50 
> 
Pre COAG UN Sere! 02 oes. one eae ee «' 6 30 
Cost for each sheep, 284 cents. ; 
From these sheep I have sixteen lambs. The wool will be worth from $20 
to $25, and the increase, sixteen lambs, worth $2 each by fall, $32—giving me 
over $40 clear. But sheep-raising receives little attention in a cotton country. 
I raise them only for the mutton. When dogs do not interfere with us, our 
mutton does not cost more than one cent per pound. 
Lavaca county, Texas.— Winter quarters” are, in a manner, unknown here. 
The sheep grazing on the prairies, when the range has been good all winter, 
owing to very mild weather, with the exception of a few cold days, are in very 
