Live Stock. Sheep Folding of Why fo much praRifed. 6*95 



&ock in one parcel with folding. He does not conceive that the fields would have 

 carried three-fourths fo managed. Four drivings in a day make them trample much 

 food, difquiet the (heep, and transfer the choice of their hours of feeding and reft 

 from themfelves to the fhepherd and his boy. While Iambs are young they are 

 injured by this, and the ewes are liable to be hurried and heated: all which are 

 objects that fhould weigh in the queftion. When fheep are kept i?i numerous 

 parcels, it is only driving to and from the fold that affects them, but they are, 

 in fact, driving about in a fort of march all day long, when theftrongeft have too 

 great an advantage, and the flock divides into the head and the tail of it, by which 

 means one part of them mud trample the food to be eaten by another. All this 

 points the very reverfe of their remaining perfectly quiet in fmall parcels. But 

 the queftion turns on the benefit to be reaped by the fold ; for, if that be great 

 enough to compenfate for the lofs by fuch circumftances, the practice may not be 

 condemned.&quot; 



Mr. Young fufpects that the reafon why farmers are fuch warm advocates for 

 folding, arifes from the power it gives them of facrificing thegrafs lands of a farm 

 to the arable part of it. Their object is corn, by which they can carry off a farm 

 whatever improvement they bring to it. Grafs improved is profit to the landlord 

 in future, and tenants are too apt to think that this is done at their expence. 

 They do not at all regard impoverilhing a grafs field in order to improve a ploughed 

 one ; and he need not obferve, that every fort of fheep-walk is thus impoverifhed ; 

 fothat antient walks, which have been fheep-paftured perhaps for five centuries, 

 are no better at prefent than they ever were be fore ; whereas mod fields fheep fed, 

 without folding from them, are in a conftant ftate of amelioration: this leads him 

 to remark the effect he obferved on feveral of his own fields. He attended through 

 the courfe of a fummer many gentlemen over his fields, with a view to examine 

 whether the {heep had feemed to have refted only on fpots, to the too great ma 

 nuring of fuch ; or, on the contrary, to have diftributed themfelves more equally ; 

 and it was a pleafure to find, that they feemed generally to have fpread in every 

 part, if not quite equally, at leaft nearly fo. The improved countenance of feveral 

 old lays fed in the fame manner, when examined in autumn, convinced him as well 

 as his batliff, that the ground had been unqueftionably improved considerably. 

 Thofe fields had carried a very bad appearance for fome years ; but they were, after 

 {heep-feeding, ol a rich verdure, and as full ofworm-cafts as if they had been 

 dunged. He rolled them heavily in November, but they foon became rough. 



