FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 169 
Dairying took the place of wool-growing. It proved 
a steadily and highly remunerative department of 
husbandry. Fashion, custom, and the faurm-training 
of youth tend rapidly to absorb the rural population 
in a prevailing and profitable pursuit. A generation 
has been growing up familiar with and attached to 
dairying, and unacquainted with sheep husbandry. 
And it is not to be denied that the former, in proper 
situations, cannot be surpassed in profit by any other 
rural pursuit. Besides, the dairying region proper of 
the United States bears no proportion, in extent, to 
the wool-growing region, and therefore competition is 
less to be feared at home; and as it cannot come from 
abroad, this interest has less to fear from legislation. 
The course of events for the last few years, however, 
has turned more attention throughout very large por- 
tions of our country to wool culture. It is time, in 
my judgment, when that culture should revive in this 
State. Our people must now be consuming annually 
something like 20,000,000 Ibs. of wool raised outside of 
our own borders. There is little doubt that instead of 
thus paying out a large sum for the raw material of a 
necessary of life, which we have abundant room and 
time and materials to cultivate for ourselves, we might 
grow all the wool we need, and a surplus of 50,000,000 
Ibs. annually, without diminishing any other product 
which is even approximately as remunerative. 
Dairying, under the best circumstances, is far more 
profitable than sheep husbandry with inferior or mid- 
dling animals; but the best sheep are as productive 
multitudes of persons out of sheep husbandry, and prevented still 
more from embarking in it. Proper legislation would do much to cor- 
rect this evil. 
