[28] 



improved breeds of medium and long-wooled sheep for both 

 wool and mutton. Happily, we are enabled to state that 

 our farmers are already waking up to the importance of this, 

 to them, new enterprise, and from the few successful experi- 

 ments they have made, are encouraged to continue and to 

 extend their operations. At the beginning of the year, we 

 issued circulars to all the principal sheep raisers in the State, 

 soliciting their view and experience upon the subject. Their 

 answers have been most gratifying and satisfactory. They 

 are not as full and complete as we could wish, but one and 

 oil agree upon the practicability and advantages of the 

 change, and propose to increase the number of their flocks 

 of improved breeds as fast as their means and opportunities 

 will admit of. The results of these experiments are the 

 more gratifying because there are no States south of Ten- 

 nessee in which the long wooled mutton sheep can be raised 

 advantageously. If there were, they would have no market 

 for their surpus lambs and mutton. Tennessee has a good 

 market for early spring lambs in St. Louis, Louisville and 

 Cincinnati, and as soon as the Northern States begin to ship 

 mutton to England as they are now doing beef, she will 

 have a good market for all she can spare. 



In 1875 the Commissioner of Agriculture of the State of 

 Georgia issued a similar circular addressed to the farmers 

 and sheep raisers of Georgia. From the answers received 

 he arrives at the following conclusions, viz. : " That the 

 cross of the Merino upon the native is the most profitable; 

 that the other pure breeds (long wooled sheep) have proved 

 to be unhealthy. Sheep are not housed in winter, but al- 

 lowed to run at large during the whole year. The annual 

 cost of keeping sheep is about fifty-three cents. Lambs 

 sold to the butcher at $1.87, mutton sheep $2.75. Dogs 

 very destructive. Census estimate of the number of sheep 

 in 1870, 419,465; present estimate 319,323, a decrease from 

 1870 to 1875 of 100,142.' 



The census returns of 1870 give the total number of 



