SECRETARY'S REPORT. 119 



this county. Any land that will produce any otlier crop, will 

 yield more with the same care and capital than it will in sheep 

 raising. And yet we believe in every farmer having a few sheep. 

 A flock of a hundred sheep would tear an ordinary farm of 

 twenty or thirty acres all to pieces. Fifteen or twenty would 

 be not only beneficial to the land, if pastured judiciously, but of 

 pecuniary profit to the owner. 



Every farmer needs a few sheep on his farm, as scavengers. 

 They are indiscriminate feeders. They are continually shifting 

 from one species of herbage to another. Our soil is peculiarly 

 favorable to sheep. It gives them a rugged constitution and 

 strong muscular development. Sheep, too, are powerful digest- 

 ers. They can extract from the driest and coarsest herbage, 

 more nutriment than any other animal. They therefore con- 

 sume, in proportion to their weight, a larger amount in bulk. 



Linnaeus found that by offering fresh plants of the ordinary 

 feeding kind, that horses ate 276 species, and refused 212 ; 

 cattle 268, and refused 218 ; while sheep ate 387, and refused 

 only 141. So that when you have pastures over which your 

 milch cows have grazed, and you find the briar, the indigo, the 

 fern, and the young whortleberry remaining, then a few sheep 

 to follow on behind your herd will be a profit. Where ten cows 

 and twenty sheep would united produce a good profit to you, a 

 hundred sheep, without any cows, would make you poorer every 

 year. The twenty sheep, thus managed, would really improve 

 every lot, while the hundred would utterly destroy your whole 

 farm. It is over-stocking and injudicious feeding, and the loss 

 by trampling and the gnawing of half-fed sheep, that destroy the 

 farm. 



And so some conclude that sheep injure land, and by their 

 manner of feeding they do ; while others as confidently assert 

 that they are a benefit : and so they are, as they use them. We 

 repeat, then, that every farmer should keep a few sheep. They 

 will clean up his rough pastures. They will furnish some lambs 

 for his table and some for market. The^ will produce wool 

 enough to make warm the wearing apparel of his wife and 

 daughters, to quilt also into the coverlets for winter, to make his 

 yarn for stockings, and a balance to sell for cash to help pay his 

 tax. So far they are good on our farms, but no farther. 



