142 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



per annum upon an investment of $500 ; while the lessee 

 would receive the same amount, together with whatever 

 benefit might accrue to his pastures and fields from the graz- 

 ing in summer and the dressing which accumulated in winter. 

 I should be glad to be one of an association to furnish sheep 

 to any farmer who desired them, upon that basis, as a long 

 step in the direction of ownership of a flock for himself. 

 If he kept the increase in ewe lambs, he would have the 

 basis of a very respectable flock at the end of the three years. 

 It would be impossible for the flock to yield results less 

 satisfactory than I have named above, if it were kept free 

 from disease and dogs. But an averao;e deojree of iutelli- 

 gence and care in management would yield far better results 

 than I have named. It would be as easy to keep sheep 

 which will yield $2 worth of wool per head as $1 worth, 

 and it is equally easy to obtain more than |3 each for the 

 lambs. If the lambs came early, it might be possible to 

 obtain $10 apiece and upward for them when two months 

 old. Or, if thoroughbred sheep were kept, — in which 

 event, of course, the original cost of the flock would be 

 higher, — a ready market at high prices could be obtained in 

 the middle western States and in the far west beyond the 

 Mississippi River. 



The New England Wool Growers' Association has recently 

 been organized as a corporation, and we have obtained for it 

 as high as 600 members ; and what we need is a co-operative 

 feature, with a system of shares and loans not unlike our 

 Massachusetts co-operative banks. Without some such 

 method of co-operation it will not be possible to introduce 

 the educational features necessary to induce the great 

 majority of New England farmers to engage in sheep hus- 

 bandry to any important extent. An addition of 3,000,000 

 sheep to the flocks now kept in New England would mean 

 an increase of at least $15,000,000 per annum in our present 

 product of wool and lambs ; and an improvement in our 

 agricultural lands which would do much toward retaining 

 upon the farms a rural population of the high character of 

 former years. 



In any wholesale eflbrt to increase the flocks of New 

 England, of course the first question would be, where the 



