DISEASES OF SHEEP. 161 



where land is from twenty to one hundred dollars an acre, and with- 

 out stipulating for Jiigh prices for mutton and for wool. 



In viewing this branch of industry as it is pursued in other coun- 

 tries, it must be conceded that in none of them is the sheep to be 

 found in such variety as in England, nor are the principles of sheep 

 management anywhere better understood. Ten years since, the 

 number in England was estimated at thirty-two millions, and the 

 value of wool at seven millions pounds sterling; while in the United 

 iStates, one of which is larger than England, there were not exceed- 

 ing twenty millions of sheep in 1840. 



Bat here again, as in other industrial pursuits, the superiority of 

 British husbandry is reierable, not to more advanced knowledge, but 

 to lower wages for labour, and to their greater humidity of climate, 

 which enables them to provide succulent rye and other grass pastures 

 in early spring, but more especially in the productiveness of their 

 turnip husbandry. Each contributes to sustain and extend the other, 

 and both to supporting and increasing population. But the vast crops 

 of turnips on which English sheep are folded, are produced with an 

 outlay of labour in quantity that nothing but the cheapness of it 

 would warrant, and at an expense after all which shows how as ne- 

 cessary capital is to the best system of tillage as it is to the prosecu- 

 tion of mercantile or any other business. How great again must be 

 the profits of the turnip crop, direct and indirect, to authorise a tenant 

 en land loaded with taxes to go to an expense of nearly fifty dollars 

 per acre in putting in his root crop, as may be seen in the arti-ile Ap* 

 praisement, in that inestimable work for the American agriculturist, 

 Governeur Emerson's ediiion of the American Encyclopedia, pub- 

 lished by Carey &. Hart of Philadelphia. The details as there given 

 of expenditures in putting in only seventeen acres of Swedish tur- 

 nips, are estimated at nearly nine hundred dollars, a sum actually 

 paid for the crop in the ground, in a case stated by the in-coming 

 tenant. Owing to the mildness of their winder, the turnip crop is 

 left on the land^ and sheep are hurdled on small loCs at a time. The 

 land is thus wonderfully sustained and improrod fcr the production 

 of barley and wheat, yielding of the latter in n.'c'i.v cases forty, fifty, 

 and sixty bushels, and that in light land. Hov .^cra.r?bly adapted 

 too would be these two products thus auxiliary to ■^rch other, turnips 

 and sheep, to the sandy lands in some of the covai t:es along our 

 southern seaboard! In England, both Old and .Avt^ instead of 

 leaving, as is done in some of the southern States, l&vt numbers of 

 sheep \o die off, of poverty and old age, breeding from Xbt vorst, and 

 to the last, and thus producing a diseased and rickety s+ocl', they are 

 eystematioally sorted out, fattened at a given age, and handed ovei 

 to the butcher. 



The best sheep-masters in England fatten and sell off th-^ir ewes, 



at four or at most five years old. It was the opinion of the celebrated 



Mr. Ell man, a Britisli farmer of high and liberal character, that 



thuno-h an old ewe would bring a large lamb, yet such a lamb will 



14*= 



