MAY.] FOLDING SHEEP. 273 



heated, all which are objects that should weigh in 

 the question. When sheep are kept in large 

 ilocks, it is not only driving to and from fold that 

 affects them, but they are in fact driving about in a 

 sort of inarch all d:<y long, when the strongest have 

 too great an advantage,, and the flock divides into 

 the head and the tail of it, which must trample 

 on one part the food to be eaten by another. All 

 point the very reverse of their remaining perfectly 

 quiet in small parcels. 



But the question turns on the benefit to be 

 reaped by the fold ; for if this be great enough to 

 compensate for the loss by such circumstances, the 

 practice may not be condemned. 



I believe the reason why fanners are such warm 

 advocates for folding, arises from the power it gives 

 them of sacrificing the grass lands of a farm to the 

 arable of it. Their object is corn ; by which they 

 can carry off whatever improvement they bring on 

 to a farm. Grass improved, is the landlord's purse 

 in future filled : and tenants are too apt to think, 

 that when this is done, it is 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 impoverished; so that ancient walks, which 

 have been sheep-pastured, perhaps, for five cen- 

 turies, are no better at present than they ever were 

 before ; whereas^ any fields sheep -fed, without fold- 

 ing from them, are in a constant state of ameliora- 



T tion, 



