94 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



ufactures or household products, was over 22,000,000 pounds. 

 This fact also appears, that the sheep husbandry of Massa- 

 chusetts is tending, with a remarkable directness and rapidity, 

 to the growing of coarse and middle-wooled sheep for their 

 flesh, and to the exchision of those breeds raised only for their 

 wool, all over the ^tate, except on the mountain ranges in the 

 western part, where remoteness from market, and extensive 

 tracts of rough pasture will still maintain a limited number of 

 merino flocks. While in 1845, the fine-wooled sheep numbered 

 about 200,000, or 45,000 more than all others ; in 1855, they 

 numbered only 72,390, or 435 less than the coarse and middle 

 wools. "We have no figures for 18G0 to show exactly how the loss 

 of 32,000 sheep since 1855 is divided, but by taking the same 

 ratio, and also by a careful examination and comparison of the 

 returns from the different towns in the State, especially in 

 Berksliire, formerly the great home of the fine wools, and 

 which alone §hows a decrease of 22,000 in that time, it is 

 probable that on the first of May last, the coarse and middle- 

 wooled sheep exceeded the fine-wooled by full 10,000. 



Among the several causes to which these great changes in 

 sheep husbandry are traceable, are the fluctuations in the price 

 of fine wool, varying from 54 cents down to 28 cents during 

 twenty years ; the uncertainty of disposing of the clip ; the 

 impossibility of competing with the immense sheep-walks of the 

 West and South, and Australia; the disproportionately increased 

 expense, trouble and losses in a large flock of fine wools, over 

 a smaller and more ])rofitable flock of mutton sheep ; the ready 

 sale and quick returns for mutton and lamb ; and the destruc- 

 tion of sheep by dogs. 



The returns from the various towns state, almost without 

 exception, that the killing and w^orrying of sheep by dogs have 

 tended largely to reduce the keeping of sheep ; the testimony 

 to this was so universal and so decided, that the legislature 

 two years ago passed a stringent and effective law, — from which 

 we already perceive benefits, taxing all dogs, and from the fund 

 so made, paying all losses caused by the destruction of sheep by 

 dogs. Few persons are aware how^ destructive dogs are to sheep. 

 We have never had any returns in this State as to the amount 

 of damage done by dogs ; but in Ohio, in 1858, the number of 

 sheep thus killed was 60,536 ; of sheep injured 36,441 — total 



