IV4 SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 



England's power is based upon its iron, its coal, and its turnips !" 

 Thus we find that sheep, since the introduction of turnip culture in 

 England, have increased from sixteen to upwards of thirty-two mil- 

 lions. 



Embracing with pleasure every opportunity to do honour to the 

 names of those real benefactors of agriculture like Lord Townshend, 

 who contribute unostentatiously to multiply the comforts of life, in 

 the same connection it may be well for the special benefit of those 

 who affect to ridicule book fanning and learned farmers, to remark, 

 en passant, ti\at the greatest agricultural improvements in all countries 

 have been introduced by Gentlemen Farmers; to them the best in- 

 formed annalists of English agriculture acknowledge that country to 

 be indebted for the turnip, for clover, for sanfoin, for lucerne, potatoes, 

 cabbages, &c. While it is admitted tiiat this vegetable has supplied 

 in England the great desideratum, urinter food for sheep and cattle, 

 and given to the supplies of both prodigious extension, it cannot be 

 denied that she enjoys for success in turnip husbandry two great 

 means which, for betfer and for worse, are denied to, or are not pos- 

 sessed by us. It is better for us in the long run, that labour is too 

 dear to bestow on the culture of this vegetable, in the present condi- 

 tion of the country, that immense outlay in preparing and manuring 

 the land which attends it in England. It is worse for us if we could 

 command the labour, that our climate is generally too arid for its 

 growth, in anything like the abundance yielded by the turnip crops 

 in England ; and such is the severity of our frosts and its action on 

 the earth, that it would not be practicable to feed them off to folded 

 sheep as in England, where they are confined by hurdles to small 

 portions of the field at a time, and moved to fresh lots every morning. 

 Against this English crop, however, valued as before stated, we have 

 (though not, it must be admitted, altogether available as a substitute 

 for turnips in sheep husbandry) our three hundred and seventy-seven 

 millions, five hundred and thirty-one thousand, eight hundred and 

 seventy-five bushels of Indian corn! which she reckons not at all 

 among her cereal grains. Yet it does not by any means follow, that 

 because the turnip is not so well suited to our climate, therefore we 

 cannot profitably raise them, especially the rutabaga variety, and if 

 not them, other vegetables accessary, if not indispensable, in northern 

 climates, to the increase of our flocks of sheep. 



In looking for the reason why sheep should be a source of a large 

 proportion of the income and wealth of the farmer, in the snow-clad 

 regions of Vermont, where his sheep go into the fold-yard in No- 

 vember, to be fed until May, one of the most obvious would seem 

 to be that the climate is better adapted to hay and to potatoes. Look 

 at the statistics in these respects, of Virginia, for example, with her 

 forty-four millions eight hundred thousand of acres, and Vermont, 

 containing but two millions one hundred and seventy-five thousand, 

 we find that the former produces of hay but three hundred and sixty- 

 ^ur thousand seven hundred and eight tons, and of potatoes only two 



