163 FINE WOOL SITEEP HUSBANDRY. 
early maturity is, indeed, the precursor if not the 
cause of an equally early decline. Merino ewes not 
unfrequently raise good lambs at fourteen or fifteen 
years old; and the dam of the once famous “ Robin- 
son ram,” I am informed, had a lamb in her twenty- 
second year. 
In regions sufficiently accessible to market, it may 
become ultimately the most profitable way of dis- 
posing of full-blood ewes, to adopt Mr. Thorne’s 
system with them ; raise February lambs and fatten 
off the ewes in the fall, when they are from six to 
eight years old. Older ewes should be allowed to 
produce no lambs the season they are to be fattened. 
One more question remains in regard to our future. 
It costs twice as much to keep a sheep in New York 
as on the plains of the Northwest, and four times as 
much as on the prairies of Texas. Can we continue 
to bear up under this competition? The same ques- 
tion may as well be put in regard to most of the prin- 
cipal agricultural necessaries of life—for the difference 
in the cost of production is equally great in regard to 
them-—-and several of them, too, are as portable as 
wool, and more portable than mutton. Do the New 
England farmers get a poorer living than they did be- 
fore the competition of the twice as valuable lands of 
New York opened close upon them? Are prices 
lower in New York since the vast West and North- 
west became populated farming lands ? 
The increase of the non-producers has more than 
kept pace with that of the producers; and nearness 
to market, the consequent ability to take advantage 
of its fluctuations, the greater certainty of finding 
ready sales, and the lesser cost and risk of transpor- 
