162 FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 



early maturity is, indeed, the precursor if not the 

 cause of an equally early decline. Merino ewes not 

 unfrequently raise good lambs at fourteen or fifteen 

 years old ; and the dam of the once famous " Robin- 

 son ram," I am informed, had a lamb in her twenty- 

 second year. 



In regions sufficiently accessible to market, it ma/ 

 become ultimately the most profitable way of dis- 

 posing of full-blood ewes, to adopt Mr. Thome's 

 system with them ; raise February lambs and fatten 

 off the ewes in the fall, when they are from six to 

 eight years old. Older ewes should be allowed to 

 produce no lambs the season they are to be fattened. 



One more question remains in regard to our future. 

 It costs twice as much to keep a sheep in New York 

 as on the plains of the Northwest, and four times as 

 much as on the prairies of Texas. Can we continue 

 to bear up under this competition ? The same ques- 

 tion may as well be put in regard to most of the prin- 

 cipal agricultural necessaries of life for the difference 

 in the cost of production is equally great in regard to 

 them and several of them, too, are as portable as 

 wool, and more portable than mutton. Do the New 

 England farmers get a poorer living than they did be- 

 fore the competition of the twice as valuable lands of 

 New York opened close upon them? Are prices 

 lower in New York since the vast West and North- 

 west became populated farming lands ? 



The increase of the non-producers has more tha:i 

 kept pace with that of the producers ; and nearness 

 to market, the consequent ability to take advantage 

 of its fluctuations, the greater certainty of finding 

 ready sales,- and the lesser cost and risk of transpor- 



