MN.J FOLDING SHEEP. 5 



only driving to and from fold that affects them, but 

 they are, in fact, driving about in a sort of march 

 all day long, when the strongest have too great an 

 advantage, and the flock divides into the head and 

 the tail of it, by which means one part of them 

 must trample the food to be eaten by another. AU 

 this points the very reverse of their remaining per-r 

 feclly quiet in small parcels. 



But the question turns on the benefit to be reap- 

 ed by the fold ; for if that be great enough to com* 

 pensate for the loss by such circumstances, the 

 practice may not be condemned. 



I believe the reason why farmers are such warm 

 advocates for folding, arises from the power it gives 

 them of sacrificing the grass lands of a farm to the 

 arable part of it. Their object is corn, by which 

 they can carry off a farm whatever improvement 

 they bring to it. Grass improved is profit to the 

 landlord in future ; and tenants are too apt to 

 think, that this is done at their expence. They 

 do not at all regard impoverishing a grass field in 

 order to improve a ploughed one ; and I need not 

 observe, that every sort of sheep-walk is thus im- 

 poverished ; so that ancient walks, which have 

 been sheep-pastured perhaps for five centuries, are 

 no better at present than they ever were before; 

 whereas most fields sheep-fed, without folding from 

 them, are in a constant state of amelioration : this 

 leads me to remark the effect I observed on several 

 of my own fields. 



I attended, through the course of a summer, 

 B 3 many 



