ESSAY ON SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 147 



woolgrowing. — Mr Jewett, an American woolgrower, has re- 

 cently imported French sheep which shear 21 lbs each, at an 

 outlay of some 30,000 dollars, but that is in Northern Ver- 

 mont, and there, sheep may be pastured at two to three shil- 

 lings each, while 90 cents each is as low as it can be done for 

 in our County. 



Still, when it is recollected that in 1845 there were 16 

 woolen mills in this County, with 103 sets of machinery, 

 working up 2,292,500 lbs of wool annually, and that there 

 should have actually been but 15,638 lbs of wool grown, we 

 are struck with the fact, that contiguity to the market is not 

 always sufficient to produce the supply for that market. And 

 although a " free trade" interchange of products is sometimes 

 the best of economy, yet there is a favorite theory lingering in 

 most New England minds, that tjou should never buy what you 

 can raise, — or conversely, raise everything you want, if it will 

 groiD. It does not follow because a family have 50 lbs of 

 wool, that they should therefore manufacture it into cloth. 

 The mills may do this cheaper and better. 



Before discussing the question whether sheep husbandry 

 should have a larger share of attention in Essex County, on 

 account of the wool, I wish to remark that there is one case 

 at least, in which it would be a good investment to keep 

 sheep, without regard to either the wool or flesh. It is where 

 pastures are bushy and shrubby. No common vegetable 

 will stand before a flock of sheep kept sufficiently short.* 

 The thousands of acres of pasture land, so full of blackberry 

 vines, blueberry bushes, whortleberry bushes, and what not, 

 defying the cow and sometimes crowding her out entirely, 

 may be subdued in a few short years by overstocking with 

 sheep. The sheep need not be made poor by it, where it 

 is convenient to fence off a portion at a time. Put twenty 

 sheep on to a four acre lot for a month, and then on to 

 another such lot : then back, and so on, alternately for six 

 months. In three years, all biennials will disappear, if the 

 leaf be taken off as fast as it grows. If the sheep come to 



*Sheep will feed, says a naturalist, upon 400 different vegetables, which 

 xio other animal but the goat will do. 



