170 SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 



ing of sheep for the butcher, and of wool for the manufacturer, ou^ht 

 to be a leadinor object of attention ? Yet look at the table hereafter 

 to be presented, of the number of sheep to the acre in the States of 

 Maryland and Virginia, and the Carolinas, with their fine possessions 

 of cheap mountain land, compared with the number in Vermont and 

 New York ! It would really seem as if these old souibern States 

 were animated by that antipathy to this emblem of meekness and 

 innocence which the great cynic "of Roanoke" once avowed on the 

 floor of congress would prompt him to go " out of his way at any 

 time to kick a sheep r"* New York, one sheep for every two and a 

 half acres; Maryland and Virginia, one for every thirty-three; South 

 Carolina, only one for every hundred ; and Arkansas, one for every 

 thousand acres ! 



Were it allowable in this mere introduction to a work on the diseases 

 of sheep, the whole subject of sheep husbandry is one which might 

 be profitably, if it were well discussed, opening as it does so wide a 

 field for observation and lecture. All that we can take space to do 

 will be to call attention to the unemployed capacities of the country 

 for doubling its flocks from Pennsylvania to the southern and western 

 limits of the Union ; and he who runs may read the addition which 

 may thus so easily, and with so little cost, be made to the aggregate 

 wealth of the country. 



How different the calculation and the practice in the north, where, 

 incredible as it may appear, it is truly a common thing for farmers 

 to go round as winter approaches and buy up large numbers of old' 

 sheep at a price little, if any more, than the worth of their skins, the 

 profit of the speculation consisting in part in the value of the carcass 

 as food for their hogs. The pelt being first taken off, the carcass is 

 boiled, or iryed^ as they term it, for the t-nllow it will yield ; the 

 residuum is given to their hogs, meal being mixed therewith, not 

 long before they are slaughtered. 



It has been somewhere said that our enlightened minister in Eng- 

 land was thought to be "boiling the ewe" with John Bull, when he 

 alluded to this practice in New England ; hence we may suppose 

 that sheep have been brought to no such base uses in Great Britain; 

 but it has been many years since the writer was assured at Brighton, 

 Massachusetts, that flocks of sheep were sometimes sent with droves 

 of hogs from Vermont to that market, to constitute, in part, their 

 cheapest provision on the way ; and ver^' recently Mr. Hyde, a re- 

 spectable and extensive mail contractor from Vermont, sustained in 

 his statement by Mr. Russel, formerly a member of congi-ess from 

 New York, declared the system of buying up and appropriating old 

 sheep, as before stated, to be a matter of common occurrence. The 

 facts are here mentioned to show to the owners of millions of acres 

 of unappropriated hilly and mountain lands from the western branch 

 of the Susquehanna to the State of Alabama, that very nice calcu- 

 lators of profit and loss find their account in raising sheep, even 



