98 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



mutton to make them pay alike." When our formers find the 

 demand for mutton increasing according to their exertions to 

 make it good, that they can raise it a quarter cheaper than they 

 can beef, and that it is better liusbandry to get a liundred 

 pounds of mutton from one sheep than from two, and that the 

 quality of that will be a controlling condition, then we shall 

 have them in our State cultivating the best breeds of English 

 mutton sheep, to the comfort, profit and health of the whole 

 community, as well as of themselves. 



Another very important consideration which should move for 

 the raising of more sheep, is the beneficial effect they produce 

 upon pastures. 



We are all too well aware of the impoverished condition of 

 most of the pastures of this Commonwealth, and of the very 

 important place which good pasturage holds in agriculture. 

 To the question proposed in our circular whether sheep improved 

 pasture land, there has been from every return, but one une- 

 quivocal " yes, especially on those pastures where the coarse 

 grasses, briars and bushes are coming in." To quote from a very 

 able essay by the Secretary of the Massachusetts Society : "Our 

 own observation and experience has fully confirmed the cor- 

 rectness of the returns in this respect. We have constantly 

 under our eye a hundred acre lot upon which cattle a few years 

 ago could not live, that now maintains in good condition a large 

 flock of sheep ; and the improvement of the pasture has been so 

 great that a dozen head of cattle beside the sheep do well 

 on it. 



" The reasons for this are obvious to any one who has observed 

 the habits of sheep ; they are more indiscriminate feeders than 

 cattle ; they nip the shoots of almost every shrub as well as weed, 

 extirpating many kinds in the course of two or three years ; 

 they make room in this way for the grasses to come in where 

 they have been shadowed out or otherwise displaced ; the white 

 weed, the broom or wood-waxen as it is commonly termed, the 

 golden rod, the blackberry vine, the blueberry, with many 

 other similar plants, disapj)ear before them, and the finer 

 grasses and white clover take their place. 



" This, however, is only one of the advantages which sheep 

 possess over cattle upon pastures which are impoverished, — they 

 scatter their mauure in the way to produce the largest benefit, 



