SHEEP-FARMING IN THE WEST. \\\ 



Plain the grass is rank and rich, and on the slopes the 

 soil is sandy and herbage sparse. It is on these barren 

 uplands the sheep love to dwell, and where they seem 

 to thrive best, while the flat-lands are reserved for cat- 

 tle-ranges. The atmosphere is very clear, and objects 

 ten miles off do not appear to be over two miles distant. 

 It would be impossible for any one to take a pulmonary 

 disease in such a climate, and it would be a very bad 

 case of consumption, indeed, which could not be cured 

 by a year's sheep-herding on the Plains. Every one 

 sleeps out in the open air at night, and although the 

 thermometer often drops down below zero there is not 

 the slightest danger of taking cold or contracting rheu- 

 matism. 



Mr. Edward Curly, of the London Field, speaking 

 of the climate of these Plains, says : " Snow will grad- 

 ually disappear while the temperature is constantly be- 

 low freezing-point. Place a saucer of anhydrous 

 sulphuric acid under a glass bell, with a little snow 

 around it, on a very cold day, and you can produce the 

 same effect on a very small scale in England, and from 

 the same cause. The boiled acid will make the air 

 within the glass so very dry that it will drink up the 

 snow, or cause it to evaporate without going through the 

 intermediate process of melting. Moisten a piece of 

 cambric and hang it out in the wind on the Plains on a 

 very cold day, and it will freeze quite stiff immediately, 

 and in a short time be quite dry and limp. The ice 

 within the fibrous threads has evaporated without melt- 

 ing, precisely as the snows of Wyoming or Colorado 

 waste away." 



