ADVANTAGES OF SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 97 



high, thin -soiled dairy farms of New York; and every 

 person who has kept the two animals ought to know that 

 sheep will enrich such lands far more rapidly than cows. On 

 the imperfectly cleared and briery lands of our grazing 

 regions, sheep will more than pay for their summer keep, for 

 several years, merely in clearing and cleaning up the land. 

 They effectually exterminate the blackberry (Rubus villosus 

 et trivialis,) and raspberry (Rubus strigosus et occidentalis,} 

 the common pests in such situations, and they banish or 

 prevent the spread of many other troublesome shrubs and 

 weeds. They also, unlike any other of our valuable domestic 

 animals, exert a direct and observable influence in banishing 

 coarse, wild, poor grasses from their pastures and bringing 

 in the sweeter and more nutritious ones-" It was a proverb 

 of the Spaniards: "Wherever the foot of the sheep touches, 

 the land is turned into gold." 



" And the growth of wool is peculiarly adapted to the 

 pecuniary means and the circumstances of a portion of our 

 rural population. Their capital is mostly in land. Hired 

 labor is costly. Sheep husbandry will render all their cleared 

 land profitably productive at a less annual expenditure for 

 labor than any other branch of farming. By reason of the 

 rapid increase of sheep, and the great facility of promptly 

 improving inferior ones, they will stock a farm well, more 

 expeditiously, and with far less outlay, than other animals. 

 And, lastly, the ordinary processes and manipulations of 

 sheep husbandry are simple and readily acquired. On no 

 other domestic animal is the hazard of loss by death so small. 

 It is as healthy and hardy as other animals, and unlike all the 

 others, if decently managed, a good sheep can never die in 

 the debt of man. If it dies at birth, it has consumed nothing. 

 If it dies the first whiter, its wool will pay for its consumption 

 up to that period. If it lives to be sheared once, it brings its 

 owner into debt to it, and if the ordinary and natural course 

 of wool production and breeding goes on, that indebtedness 

 will increase uniformly and with accelerating rapidity until 

 the day of its death. If the horse or the steer die at three 

 or four years old, or the cow before breeding, the loss is 

 almost a total one." 



The cost of producing wool depends upon that of keeping 

 sheep, and this necessarily varies greatly in different 

 situations. On the highest priced lands in New York and 

 New England on which sheep are now usually kept for wool 

 growing purposes, it, under judicious systems of winter 

 6 



