Shelter. 79 



matter, and it cannot be said that its domestication is 

 complete without the privilege of shelter is available, 

 by way of tree, hedge, or otherwise. 



Sheep farming is the mainstay of Australasia. It 

 furnishes the material for our almost entire prosperity, 

 and the magnitude of the benefits arising from shelter 

 to the industry may well be closely reviewed. It cannot 

 be overlooked first of all that a property with a judicious 

 planting of timber has a very much greater attraction to 

 the eye than one that has not. It is, as a matter of fact, 

 very much more valuable. Intrinsically, we find that 

 shelter for stock provides protection from excess of cold 

 and excess of heat. It brings the domestication of the 

 animal more to the real plane of such domestication. 

 Where a large area of land has belts of timber or hedges 

 planted at discriminate distances apart, or is broken by 

 hills or undulations, the velocity and intensity of the 

 cold and hot winds are found to be broken. Not only to 

 the stock does this give warmth or coolness, as the case 

 may be, but to the soil, and the grasses or the crops. It 

 is a threefold benefit to the stock; they enjoy more 

 equable temperature personally, which adds to their con- 

 dition ; they get a better pasture supply, and have the 

 opportunity of protecting themselves under the shelter 

 or on the lee from trying heat, rainfall, sleets, or maybe 

 snow. The effects of winter's storm and cold and sum- 

 mer's heat are moderated. There are breeds of sheep, of 

 course, that can withstand all these things better than 

 others, but permitting them to so do is not according 

 with the positive law that everything in nature seeks 

 shelter under whatever conditions. Even if the accepted 

 principle were to breed-up stock to a withstanding re- 

 sistance of all the forces of constant changing climate, 

 which is absurd in the consideration of anything but 

 stationary plants, still, the artifice of the sheep farmer in 

 shearing his sheep calls for a corresponding move to 

 give protection from the ill effects of exposure after de- 



