210 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



the family against tramps and burglars, is a useful animal. 

 All others are luxuries, and those who keep them should pay 

 for the privilege, for the protection afforded by the law to 

 these animals when they are outside the premises, and 

 beyond the care of the owner. The apathy of the farmers 

 alone prevents the enactment and execution of laws to abate 

 this nuisance. 



Here I wish to remark that the protection or encourage- 

 ment of any farm industry, be it sheep, dairy, tobacco 

 or any other, is a protection to every other product. If 

 one thousand sheep are kept in place of one hundred cows, 

 there is so much less competition in the dairy. When 

 properly handled, these thousand sheep are such improvers 

 of the pasturage and productive capacity of the lands, that 

 no less cows may be kept, and whatever income they bring 

 to agriculture is a larger interest on the farm value, and the 

 farmer shares his profits with the manufacturer, who gets 

 more, cheaper and better wool, and with the consumer, in 

 which class he belongs, who gets cheaper and better mutton, 

 and cheaper and better cloth, if adulteration with shoddy or 

 flocks is treated by law with the same stringency as it is 

 proposed to treat oleo and other factitious food products, — 

 and why not? 



The game laws, with a certain show of learning, a talk 

 about ferce natural ("wild nature"), seem designed more to 

 favor hunters than to protect game or to favor agriculture. 

 Why should not the owner of land have with it all the 

 privileges of fish, game, wild fruits, etc., without the 

 necessity of inclosing that land and posting it, to keep off 

 intruders? Hunters know, or should know, whether they 

 are on their own land or on that where they are permitted to 

 hunt, or on yours, from whom they will not take the trouble 

 to ask permission for the privilege. From the side of 

 agriculture, why should the farmer's boy be excluded from 

 his method of taking game, that the sportsman may over- 

 run his fields, scare his cattle and sheep, and perchance 

 shoot them, or more often allow them to wander from their 

 inclosures by a reckless disregard of his rights by opening 

 bars or destroying fences ? 



The right to take iraine should be vested in the owner of 



