214 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



in the winter, from a flock of slieep. Another and a strong 

 reason remains why the farmers of Middlesex should return to 

 sheep husbandry. 



Many of our pasture lands exhibit a broken and rocky surface, 

 but little amenable to the plougli. Other portions are sandy 

 plains, and lie at a distance from the homes of tlieir owners. 

 Since the discontinuance of sheep culture, these pastures have 

 been severely cropped by neat stock, and have now become 

 nearly worthless. Many of them are covered with bushes and 

 briars, or with mosses and worthless grasses. Experience 

 shows that sheep walks instead of becoming exhausted, uni- 

 formly grow better and more productive, and that one of the 

 most effectual means of destroying the bushes and mosses, and 

 bringing back the white clover and sweet grasses to an exhausted 

 pasture, is to turn upon it a flock of sheep. A gentleman writ- 

 ing from Plymouth County in 1859, remarks: " Some of the 

 finest examples are afforded here of the effects of feeding sheep 

 upon pastures that have become exhausted of nutritious grasses, 

 and grown to bushes, briars, brakes and moss. I have seen 

 pastures to-day that had become almost worthless, but now 

 green and smiling as a lawn, with every inch among the rocks 

 covered with the richest pasture grasses, and not a blackberry 

 vine, wild rose bush, muUen or other useless plant in sight. 

 The sward docs not seem bound and compact, but loose and 

 porous, and filled with the most healthy and vigorous roots. 

 The sheep grazing upon these pastures afford ample evidence of 

 the richness and luxuriance of the grasses upon which they 

 feed. These examples, with similar ones which I have observed 

 in other places widely remote, would seem to shed light on the 

 perplexing question so often asked. How shall I reclaim my 

 old pasture ? All over New England there are thousands of 

 acres producing little or nothing, that might be renovated by 

 the introduction of sheep upon them, while the profits of the 

 slieep themselves I believe would be larger than from the same 

 amount of money invested in cows. I have been told of an 

 instance where a hundred acre pasture fed scantily only twelve 

 sheep and six cows the first year, but on the second summer fed 

 well twenty sheep and twelve cows, and continued to increase 

 in fertility until more than double this number was fed upon 

 it." R. S. Fay, Esq., the highly intelligent secretary jaf the 



