SECRETARY'S REPORT. 127 



corresponds pretty nearly with the experience of our farmers. 

 The tables of Mr. Lawes, an English agricultural chemist, 

 farmer and writer, give the money value of the manure made 

 from different articles of food, which we will not give in detail ; 

 showing that roots have small manurial value ; hay has more ; 

 then Indian corn ; beans, linseed meal, and cotton-seed meal, 

 which has the highest value ; a ton of it producing four times 

 the value of manure that hay does : or in other words, as much 

 as four tons of hay, worth from $50 to f 60, while the Union 

 Oil Company sell their cotton-seed meal at Providence, for 

 8^6.50 per ton, so that it must be great economy to use it ; and 

 we know farmers who have perceived very great gains in the 

 value of the manure made from it ; it is also superior to any 

 other feed for producing fat, wool, and inducing a great flow of 

 milk in ewes or cows. Linseed meal is so shamefully adulte- 

 rated, that it can rarely be found pure, while the cotton-seed meal 

 as yet unadulterated, is believed to be quite equal to pure 

 linseed. The tables which we have given, although prepared 

 with great care, may not be correct, or rather may not corres- 

 pond with the opinions of, and results obtained by our own 

 farmers, owing to differences in climate, habits of animals, 

 method of feeding, and other causes, but they undoubtedly 

 approximate to the truth, and are valuable if they only provoke 

 criticism and actual experiments. 



As the time approaches when the ewes will drop their 

 lambs, they should be looked after with especial vigilance 

 and patience ; they should have good milk-producing food, like 

 rowen hay, or a few roots at that time. Those which are just 

 about lambing, should be removed for a while to some quiet 

 place ; if allowed to lamb in the sheds with the other sheep, the 

 ewe is likely to be knocked about, the lambs to be run over, and 

 separated from their dams, and when this happens, they are 

 very apt to perish. If the lambs come in very cold weather, it 

 is necessary to watch for them, pick them up immediately, 

 carry them into the house, wipe them dry, and presently 

 return them to the ewes. In that way we have no difficulty in 

 saving every lamb. As a general thing, the ewes require no 

 assistance in parturition ; they sometimes refuse to recognize 

 their young, but if held once or twice for the lambs to suckle, 

 they generally make no farther trouble. The ewes and lambs 



