ESSEX SOCIETY. 73 



England minds, that you should never buy lohat you can raise, 

 or conversely, raise everything- you ivant, if it will grow. It 

 does not follow because a family have fifty pounds of wool, 

 that they should therefore manufacture it into cloth. The mills 

 may do this cheaper and better. 



Before discussing the question whether sheep husbandry 

 should have a larger share of attention in Essex county, on 

 account of the wool, I wish to remark that there is one case at 

 least, in which it would be a good investment to keep sheep, 

 without regard to either the wool or flesh. It is where pastures 

 are bushy and shrubby. No common vegetable will stand be- 

 fore a flock of sheep kept sufficiently short.* The thousands of 

 acres of pasture land, so full of blackberry vines, blueberry 

 bushes, whortleberry bushes, and what not, defying the cow, 

 and sometimes crowding her out entirely, may be subdued in 

 a few short years by overstocking with sheep. The sheep need 

 not be made poor by it, where it is convenient to fence off* a 

 portion at a time. Put twenty sheep on to a four acre lot for 

 a month, and then on to another such lot; then back, and so 

 on, alternately for six months. In three years, all biennials 

 will disappear, if the leaf be taken off as fast as it grows. If 

 the sheep come to the barn poor, a gill of corn a day, with 

 common keep, will bring them up by spring. That sheep 

 are dealt with somewhat severely, I do not deny ; it is the price 

 we must pay for the benefit of the pasture. Where the only 

 object is to destroy weeds and bushes and prepare the pasture 

 for the cow, a low priced sheep may be employed, and after 

 the object is accomplished, the sheep may be fattened or sold 

 as store sheep. But the improved appearance of the pasture 

 is not all. The sheep enriches land beyond any other animal ; 

 its manure being stronger and more stimulating. 



The popular objection may be, that the close feeding neces- 

 sary for accomplishing the object, would drive the sheep over 

 common fences. This may be ; but walls can be polled, and 

 sheep fettered, a thing often necessary to be done, even where 

 the food is good. Some pastures have the Canada thistle, and 

 sheep suffer from this exceedingly. I have known them made 

 sore with festers over the body, arising from the thistle work- 



* Sheep will feed, says a naturalist, upon 400 different vegetables, which no other 

 animal but the goat will do. 



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