THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



211 



head, against twenty-one pounds of the English 

 sheep; which, as showing his sheep to he four 

 times as good on worse pasture, will be sufficient 

 for his purposes, as it is for ours. 



We now proceed to give Col. Ware something to 

 go upon, if he shall see fit to reply to this article. 



There is a large district of country in Virginia 

 extending from the head of tide to very near the 

 mountains, such as the counties of Prince William, 

 Fairfax, Spottsylvania, Louisa, Fluvanna, parts of 

 Goochland and Hanover, and the corresponding 

 counties south of James River to the North Caro- 

 lina line. If lime will suit these lands, which is 

 doubtful, it cannot, at least in any short time, be 

 applied to them because of the heavy expense. 

 Much of this large district is turned out into old 

 field and affords a scanty herbage — the main growth 

 is bushes, generally sassafras — briars, rib wort, 

 and, as the land gets gradually better, blue grass 

 and greensward, which forms a thin sod. Much of 

 the soil is naturally good, but has been exhausted 

 by bad culture ; a great deal is naturally thin. The 

 problem is now to restore both sorts to their pristine 

 condition and to derive revenue from them : and 

 our solution of it is, to stock the land with fine 

 wooled sheep; merinoes if they are to be had, 

 Saxons if they are not, but either one or the other 

 to be crossed on the existing breeds of the country 

 until that breed is gradually substituted by the 

 fine wooled stock. When the one sort of land is 

 brought back it may be judiciously cultivated, as 

 in the case of the fighting creek farm of Dr. Harvie 

 lately described in this paper. The other kind can 

 never yield much to tillage, and should be kept as 

 far as possible in perpetual sheep walk. Many far- 

 mers own a portion of each, and they should, where 

 practicable, be so arranged as to cultivate the one 

 and graze the other, and make the sheep subsi- 

 diary to the improvement of the arable land by 

 judicious grazing and by proper folding. We would 

 not expect that those sheep should at first make 

 very fine mutton— that is not the purpose for which 

 they are intended— nor that they should be intro- 

 duced in great numbers on the land, for if they are 

 kept poor the fibre of the wool will attenuate 

 as their frames do, and will be of less value. The 

 sound judgment of the owner must regulate their 

 numbers; and doing this, he will understand that 

 he may derive a fair profit from them even though 

 thin, (we do not say poor,) by the sale of their 

 wool. Sheep browze a great deal ; and when they 

 can not get a sufficiency of other food they will 

 not only eat bushes in greater quantities than cat- 

 tle will, and of kinds which cattle reject, but they 

 will chew up running briars by the yard. In that, 

 way they will cleanse the land which, aided by 

 their manure, will put up in a better description 

 of herbage, and so adapt itself to the annual in- 



crease of a moderate flock of sheep until it attains 

 its maximum of original fertility, beyond which it 

 will not go from its own resources. 



A case analagous in all but its social conse- 

 quences occurred at the end of the last century in 

 Scotland. Whole districts in the Highlands, nearly 

 the whole possessions of the Duke of Sutherland, 

 for example, which for centuries had yielded so 

 small a pittance to the labor of the peasantry that 

 every year was a year of famine, were depopulated 

 by a forced emigration and turned into sheep walks. 

 The consequence is, — hard, and hard-hearted ap- 

 parently, as the measure was at first, — it has re- 

 sulted beneficially. Lands that before brought 

 next to no revenue to the landlord and a bare sub- 

 sistence to the occupant, now produce wool enough 

 to employ in working it up more people than for- 

 merly inhabited the territory, and mutton enough 

 to feed a still larger proportion. The sheep of that 

 country are a native breed, black faced sheep they 

 call them, hardy and inured to the bleak climate 

 and sterile moors and wastes of that exposed and 

 mountainous region ; they are small, but they afford 

 a quality of mutton which is even more highly 

 prized by the wealthy than the celebrated South 

 Down. Some of the shepherds that own these 

 flocks are among the wealthiest and of course the 

 most intelligent and enterprising of the farmers of 

 Great Britain, a class of men of rare energy, skill 

 and sagacity. The Cots wolds are much nearer to 

 them than they are to us, and at the great trystings 

 or annual fairs where, as at Falkirk, they meet 

 drovers from all parts of the united kingdom, and 

 hear all that can be said in their favor, we have yet 

 to learn that they have ever attempted to introduce 

 them or the New Leicesters or the South Downs — 

 they know that they will not suit the circumstances 

 of the country. 



We see every reason to think that here the same 

 thing may be done: the large landholders may 

 easily set the example, as some of the most liberal 

 and enterprising of them on the Southside are now 

 beginning to do, until the smaller proprietors take 

 it up. To those who have too little land for the 

 system, it will be no hardship to sell out and move 

 to the cities to consume the mutton and work up 

 the wool, because they make nothing where they 

 are, and could at least earn wages in a different 

 situation. Or if they shall not choose to do this, 

 still it need not affect the plans or the success of 

 their broad acred neighbors, into whose domains 

 their smaller proprietorships would sooner or later 

 be absorbed. The population of the whole country 

 would be increased by this step, because employ- 

 ment and the means of subsistence would be af- 

 forded to still more people ; and the population of 

 the particular district would also grow. Unlike 

 j the Highlands, the barrens we speak of are inter- 



