[155] 



stroyer and the utterly defenseless and helpless nature of 

 his victim, as from the economic view of the matter. It 

 thus seems the more strange that measures are not carried 

 to the point of exterminating this enemy of the sheep; for 

 it is quite within the power of sheep-raisers and farmers 

 generally, legislatures failing them, to rid themselves effect- 

 ually of this foe to their flocks. It only requires a little 

 more energetic endeavor than has heretofore been apparent 

 among farmers, with a little science and something of 

 method and combination in their efforts, to thoroughly 

 suppress this evil. 



" Farmers have need of watch-dogs to guard their flocks 

 and other property; but they should adopt and enforce a 

 strict rule among themselves to tolerate none but a good 

 breed the shepherd dog, heretofore commended in these 

 columns, being sufficient for all ordinary purposes. All 

 dogs habitually inclined to wander from home should be 

 destroyed. The country cannot suffer any loss in the sud- 

 denness and completeness of their taking off. Sheep-rais- 

 ing will then become at once safe and one of the most 

 prosperous and agreeable pursuits of the American agricul- 

 turist. 



"Those States, or parts of States, in which the dogs 

 threaten to outnumber the people, are, at best, fostering a 

 very crooked agricultural enterprise. The expenditure of 

 labor and capital necessary to the commencement of suc- 

 cessful sheep husbandry is so small, and the profits are so 

 comparatively large, that people should be encouraged to 

 engage more extensively, as well for their own as for the 

 general good, more especially as, in the South and South- 

 west, there are not only naturally fertile lands that need 

 the restorative presence of the sheep, but also many and 

 vast areas of land awaiting the coming of the shepherd and 

 the goatherd and his flocks, and seemingly designed by na- 

 ture to enrich him and the country through them. 



"But before the impoverished farms, or the now worth- 



