GENERAL CONCLUSIONS. 57 



the winter. It may also be necessary to explain, if any one 

 shall work out this table for himself, that in July and August 

 the after-maths of both clover and meadow come in to swell 

 the quantity of green food in that form provided during 

 those months. 



The produce per acre is put higher than probably will on 

 an average be obtained ; but in assuming 28 Ibs or there- 

 abouts to be the daily consumption of green food by a full- 

 grown sheep receiving nothing else, we are also going beyond 

 the average truth, and the one error may correct the other. 

 In fact all these calculations are the victims and the prey of 

 circumstance. Seasons upset them, disease upsets them, 

 accident upsets them. Agriculture is the most zig-zag of 

 all occupations in its ordinary experience ; and the results 

 which come of figures, if the calculation has been accurate, 

 generally exist in the mind of the experienced farmer as 

 conclusions arrived at after years during which he has 

 known every kind of lot on both sides of the average at 

 which he has at length arrived. Such calculations must 

 not however be disparaged on that account. A young 

 farmer, especially, has more or less to depend on them for 

 the provision which he determines to make for the future 

 at the outset of each year. And the only caution we shall 

 give him is to beware of over sanguine calculation, and of 

 thus stocking his land with more than the food supply 

 allows. 



Let us now therefore see what stock the provision 

 here assumed will enable us to keep. Supposing the 

 average monthly supply to be 350 tons, we shall have some 

 20,000 Ibs. of green food daily at our disposal. And this 

 would maintain a flock of something less than 1000 full- 

 grown sheep, equal to 2 sheep per acre, throughout the year. 



