152 ESSAY ON SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 



and yet enough to take away the appetite for hay. Such feed 

 as the sheep find at large, proves laxative to them, and accord- 

 ingly useful occasionally, but if followed, produces a diarrhea 

 which is stopped with diiSculty. 



MUTTON— A SUBSTITUTE FOR BEEF. 



It is remarkable, that while in England, mutton is the dish 

 on all fashionable tables, in our country, there is a general ab- 

 horrence of everything sheepish. American gentlemen, how- 

 ever, having once tasted the article as it is served up in Lon- 

 don, rarely fail to order a saddle of it by the next steamer, af- 

 ter leaving for home themselves. I have seen recent mention 

 of a quarter of an English Leicester, weighing sixty-five 

 pounds for sale in the Philadelphia market. We have yet to 

 learn that mutton like poultry, should be eaten (so says John 

 Bull) before it is dead cold, and while it has the tenderness of 

 life, or it should be kept "until the fibre begins to give way in 

 the incipient stage of decay." "In summer," John continues, 

 "mutton should be kept in ice a week, and in winter 'should 

 not be cooked under two or three weeks." 



No evidence is now required to satisfy the most sceptical, 

 that our country is capable of producing animals equal in size 

 to anything in the old world. And in this connexion, it may 

 ' be stated that Mr. P. A. Brown, of Philadelphia, by a most in- 

 genious instrument of his own contrivance, has demonstrated 

 that as fine wool has been grown in five different states of our 

 country, ag the finest ever brought from Saxony by Mr. Fleich- 

 man, except a single one, and he has one American specimen 

 finer even than that. It may also be stated, on the same au- 

 thority, (Mr. Brown's) for the encouragement of those who 

 wish to be successful in sheep husbandry, that ^^Jine wool and 

 fine mutton go together." " Sheep," he continues, " which 

 produce fine wool, are finer and better in the meat, than those 

 of coarse fleeces." I do not, however, conceive this circum- 

 stance to be material to the Essex county wool-grower. The 

 largest sheep, and those calculated for the meat market, should 

 be sought chiefly. At the same time, it is an undisputed fact 

 that coarse, long wool for carpeting, is in greater demand at 

 the mills than fine wool, and more of it is imported than of 



