SHEEP HUSBANDRY IN THE SOUTH. 29 



may find them very profitable, a competing owner in his 

 neighborhood would limit the range, and the profits would 

 diminish. It may be true that small flocks will cost so little 

 to their owner that the profit from them will be " just like 

 picking it up ; " but this may not be the case with flocks of 

 two or three hundred animals. It is erroneous to consider 

 sheep-farming, as it must be ordinarily conducted, as a matter 

 of direct profit from the investment of capital. The amount 

 of money which can ordinarily be put into sheep husbandry, 

 with advantage, by one person, is so small that it cannot be 

 properly called an investment of capital. The consideration 

 in growing sheep, except under the purely pastoral system, 

 is not one of direct profit, to be calculated like the dividends 

 from bank stock ; but it is the general advantage of com- 

 bining it with other industries on the farm, of adding to its 

 resources, and of making the whole more productive. 



The Course recommended for the South. There are two 

 very distinct branches of the wool-growing industry. One is 

 purely pastoral ; having regard only to wool, taking but little 

 account of the value of the mutton, and none of the improve- 

 ment of the land. It is conducted as an exclusive business 

 in large flocks. The sheep husbandry of Texas, California, 

 and Australia belongs to the purely pastoral system. It is 

 believed by many that the vast region of pine lands in South- 

 Eastern and Southern Georgia, extending from Savannah to 

 the Chattahoochee, comprising about ten million acres, now 

 practically unoccupied, constitutes a natural pasture, upon 

 which a million of sheep could be raised at a trifling expense. 

 This is the opinion of the Commissioner of Agriculture of the 

 State. 



Col. Richard Peters, of Atlanta, Georgia, admitted to be 

 the highest authority on sheep husbandry in the State, in his 

 original communication, elsewhere given at length, speaks of 

 this district as follows : 



" Across the entire width of the State, there is a belt of country of 

 an extent northward from the coast and the Florida line, say from a 

 hundred to one hundred and fifty miles. It is the land of the long-leaf 



