INTllOBUCTIOX. 



Tb« BUbiect ot Sheep Husbandry has recently attracted mor» attent on I'n oin 

 8 athem and South-western States, than at any previous period. The wart of a 

 ■taple or product, the cultivation of which should render productive the capital in- 

 vested in millions of acres of mountain and other lands, which do not now yield a 

 farthing of income, and which, from their soils, situation, or other circumstances, 

 are unadapted to the growth of any of the present Southern staples, has struck every 

 Southern man*, as well as every traveller of ordinary intelligence, who has passed 

 through the regions indicated. The want, too, of some class of domestic animals 

 to constitute the basis, or pivot zs it were, of a system of convertible husbandry on 

 the tillage lands of the South, to take the place of the present imperfect rotations 

 of crops, and new and old field-system, has become apparent to many of her mor* 

 investigating agriculturists. 



The fact that the mountain and other unproductive lands alluded to cannot be 

 luade to profitably yield any vegetable products but pasturage ; that for the present, 

 and for a long time to come, at least, the bulk of them will not afford a pasturage 

 adapted to the support of large animals ; could not but suggest the growing of wool, 

 as their best, if not their only available staple. The similarity of their general cli- 

 mate, too, with that where wool is most cheaply grown on the Eastern Continent, 

 was a consideration promising favorably to this husbandry. And, finally, it had 

 not failed to strike men of ordinary commercial intelligence, that of those animal 

 staples, to the production of which a Southern climate is adapted, the Sheep fur- 

 nishes a vastly more marketable one than any of the larger grazing animals. 



The superiority of the Sheep over other animals for supporting the fertility of 

 tillage lands, by converting a portion of their products into manure, was not stj^ 

 apparent. But the well-known fact that they receive the preference for thio pur- 

 pose, in some of the best agricultural countries of the world, made it sufliciontly 

 probable to demand a full investigation, before adopting an adverse conclusion, espe- 

 cially as what has been said in relation to climate and the marketableness of animal 

 staples, was as applicable to these lands, in the South, as to those adapted only to 

 grass. 



But Sheep Husbandry as a system, and especially a system tested by experience^, 

 T^as scarcely known in any of the Southern States excepting in western Virginia. 

 Whether the theoretical considerations and natural circumstances which apparentij 

 ferored its introduction would be met, in practice, with unforeseen obstacles, was a 

 matter calling for grave circumspection. The Southern agriculturist is ever wary 

 of innovation, and very properly averse to rash experiment. He knew, it is true, 

 that his roving and untended " native" sheep obtained subsistence, and found no 



