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cities the demand is, as a rule, in excess of the supply ; and the recent 

 successful enterprise of shipping fresh meat to Europe will doubtless, in a 

 few years, greatly enhance this demand. If for no other purpose, every 

 farmer should keep a few sheep that he may have a supply of fresh mut- 

 ton whenever desired. It is as wholesome and nutritious as beef, and if 

 properly dressed, as palatable. The flesh diet of our rural population is 

 chiefly salt pork; and so it must for a long time continue, especially 

 during the hot months, unless resort is had to mutton. By interchanging, 

 every neighborhood of three or lour farmers could keep their tables sup- 

 plied without risk of loss by the weather. It would add much to the 

 comfort and enjoyment of the family, and perhaps cause no small saving 

 on the score of "doctor's bills." 



Information received from all portions of this Division of the State 

 makes it certain that there is a rapidly growing sentiment in favor of 

 sheep-husbandry. Many who have not heretofore kept sheep are starting 

 flocks ; others are enlarging ; all are striving to improve their quality. 

 Quite a number have engaged extensively in breeding Cotswolds, and they 

 are unable to supply the home demand for pure-bred stock. If wisdom 

 rules in our Legislature, and the dog nuisance is permanently abated or 

 rendered harmless, it may confidently be predicted that within the next 

 decade scarcely a farm will be found without sheep, and in the larger 

 number of instances they will be the principal stock. Nature certainly 

 points in that direction ; and the good sense of our people cannot fail to 

 induce them to follow at her bidding. For us there is no need of a new 

 Argonautic expedition in search of the Golden Fleece. We can find it 

 right here at home. Her sheep yield more gold to California than her 

 mines. The herbage that grows upon our mountains and hillsides can 

 yield to us and to our posterity a more enduring supply of wealth than 

 their interiors, though traversed with Comstock lodes. 



We have presented, hitherto, some of the claims of sheep-husbandry as 

 a source of profit by the money it yields and by the fertility it imparts to 

 the soil. But it is not upon this ground alone, nor chiefly that we would 

 urge it upon our farmers. As a class of the community, they, their 

 wives and their children, are overworked. Almost from the cradle to the 

 grave they spend a life of unremitting toil. They grow prematurely old ; 

 they lack many of the rational enjoyments of life ; worse than all, they 

 are far from reaching that high standard of intellectual and moral char- 

 acter to which their occupation is preeminently favorable. Overwork is 

 as bad on the health and character as idleness. Both are extremes; both 

 are misfortunes ; the one makes men useless drones, the other makes them 

 jaded slaves. Under our present system of farming it cannot well be oth- 

 erwise. The difference in the labor required on a grain farm and that on 

 a stock farm can scarcely be appreciated by those who have not expe- 

 rienced it. But great as is this difference, it is no greater than that in 

 the character of the two classes of farmers. Go to the rich prairies of 



