142 SHEEP OF THE UNITED STATES AND SOUTH AMERICA. 



come very fat the first season on the prairies ; is this condi- 

 tion kept up many years after V 



" The first part of this question is true of persons, and is 

 undoubtedly true of stock, and in part may be attributed to a 

 change of climate. The change from an atmosphere which 

 is surcharged with oxygen and which stimulates the lungs 

 like that of the East, to one surcharged with carbon, and 

 which stimulates the liver like that of the West, is at first 

 generally attended with obesity. From other causes too, 

 stock turned upon the clear prairies, become fat, and keep 

 so till the feed fails. Some of the reasons are, that the 

 grass, while it is highly nutritious, is somewhat astringent, 

 and does not scour cattle when turned upon it in the spring, 

 like the eastern grasses. Oxen can be put to hard work 

 with no other feed, as soon as it is started in the spring, and 

 will keep in good heart and become fleshy. Again, the air 

 of the prairies is the freshest and purest on earth ; and stock 

 are less annoyed by insects while fanned by it, than any- 

 where else. Sheep or other stock, but more particularly 

 the former, put upon a given piece of wild prairie, and con- 

 fined to it, unless the range be very large, would not con- 

 tinue to keep fat one season after another, though they would 

 the first; but if allowed a new range each season, they 

 would always keep fat. The reason is this : — sheep in such 

 cases will go over their range and select such food as they 

 prefer, and will keep at it till it is gone. Hence the wild 

 bean and pea vine, and a few other kinds of plants, will ob- 

 tain their constant attentions, and will be kept so short that 

 they will, on a given piece of land, die out the first year. 

 Therefore if turned out upon the same grounds another sea- 

 son, the best food will be gone, and the poorer, with which 

 they must then take up, and which itself gets continually 

 poorer, will not sustain them in their first condition. A 

 small flock of sheep will thus run over a large extent of 

 ground. 



" Hence the utter hoUowness of a supposition which ap- 

 pears to be common at the East, that large flocks of sheep 

 can be sustained on the wild grass of the prairies alone. 

 There are many places, it is true, where a farmer mig^t 

 keep a large flock on the wild prairies during the summer 

 months with profit, provided he had not two many neighbors 

 in the same business. But such flocks would continually 

 lessen their own range, at the same time that it is lessening 



