4r5‘^ 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[December, 
Walks and Talks on the Farm—No. 84. 
The Deacon was appointed one of the judges 
on implements at our County Fair. One of his 
associates failed to appear, and he got the Pres¬ 
ident to appoint me in his place. “ It won’t 
take you more than an hour,” said the Deacon, 
and so I consented. It took us two whole days — 
and hard work at that! We had to judge 
everything;—from a churn to a steam thrashing 
machine. There ought to have been at least 
three committees; say, one, on implements for 
cultivating the land, and for sowing seeds and 
manures; another, on implements for harvest¬ 
ing, including reapers and mowers, rakes, ted¬ 
ders, loading and unloading apparatus, corn 
buskers, potato diggers, etc.; and the third, 
on all other articles not included in the above. 
This would divide up the work and give us time 
to do justice to the exhibitors and to the public. 
As it is, our decisions are a farce. There were 
half a dozen potato diggers on the ground, one 
here and another there, and we walked from 
one to the other, and tried to make up our 
minds which was the best. Then a man came 
to us to say that he had a potato digger in 
Mechanics Hall that he was exceedingly anxious 
that we should examine. There was no oppor¬ 
tunity for a field trial, but this man had got two 
or three quarts of soil spread out on a plank and 
was running his machine, or rather a model of 
it, up and down the plank to show how splen¬ 
didly it would work. This was the only “ trial ” 
of potato diggers we had. We hit on a very 
ingenious way of coming to a decision. We 
threw this one out because it was only a model; 
then another because it was too complicated ; 
and then another because it cost too much; 
then another because we did not like the looks 
of it; and so on until there was but one left, and 
to this we awarded the prize ! When we came to 
the reapers and mowers, separate and combined, 
we found half a dozen of the most celebrated 
machines, which we were asked to look at and 
say which was the best. We gave it up; and 
went to the managers and told them that it was 
impossible for us, in the short time we could 
spare, and without actual trial in the field, to de¬ 
cide as to the relative merits of these machines. 
“ But,” they said, “ we have offered a prize and 
you must award it to some one.” “ Can’t you 
agree?” asked the Secretary. “Oh, yes,” we 
replied, “ we all agree that, under the circum¬ 
stances, it is impossible to make any satisfactory 
decision.” “Well,” said the President, with 
a merry twinkle in his eye, “is not one of them 
painted a little better than the others ? Give 
that the prize.” Seriously, this whole subject 
of awarding prizes at Fairs requires attention. 
At the Fair a young man from New York was 
distributing the Rural New Yorker and gave me 
a copy. In it I found some remarks from Dr. 
Randall, the distinguished advocate of Ameri¬ 
can Merinos, in regard to the “ herding ” quali¬ 
ties of long-wooled sheep. Between you and 
me, the remarks I made on this subject and 
which led to this discussion, had no more refer¬ 
ence to Dr. Randall than to the man in the 
moon. I was speaking of a remark actually 
made to me by a farmer of this County, who 
gravely assured me that I could not keep over 
two or three dozen Cotswold sheep in one flock. 
I pronounced this idea sheer and unadulterated 
nonsense. But I did not then know that any 
one so distinguished as Dr. Randall entertained 
such an idea, while it turus out that he is the 
father of it, ,and that, my neighbor was only re¬ 
peating what he had learned from the teachings 
of the Doctor. Of course I will apologize. I 
used the words “ sheer and unadulterated non¬ 
sense,” in a Pickwickian sense. And now let 
me ask the Doctor why long-wooled sheep will 
not “ herd ” well. He has, it seems, asserted 
over and over again in his writings that they 
will not, and now turns round and with a pat¬ 
ronizing air asks the long-wooled breeders to 
prove that they will. Some of them overlook 
the sophistry of the argument and are bringing 
forward evidence to disprove a charge that rests 
only on the Doctor’s assertion. “General repute,” 
says the Doctor, “ is, in such cases, a species of 
evidence;” but the Doctor first creates this gen¬ 
eral opinion, and then quotes this general opin¬ 
ion as evidence! He says’ he does not know 
any thing experimentally about long-wooled 
sheep, but has always heard and believed that 
they will not “herd ” well. He does not tell us 
why. We infer that he thinks the length of the 
wool has something to do with it. “Merinos, 
with short wool,” he says, “herd well; South- 
Downs, with medium wool,not so well; and Cots- 
wolds, Leicesters, and Lincolns, with long-wool, 
not at all.” The Doctor should explain why. 
But seriously, I suppose the truth of the mat¬ 
ter is this: The improved long-wooled sheep 
will not bear neglect as well as the unimproved 
Merino. But will one of Mr. Hammond’s 
choice, high-bred, “improved” American Me¬ 
rinos stand neglect any better than a Cotswold, 
or a South Down? Will it do any better on 
low, wet land, or on coarse herbage ? Will it 
thrive any better on a fermenting manure heap ? 
Instead of telling farmers that improved long- 
wooled sheep will not bear “herding”—that 
they cannot be kept in large flocks—it would 
be better to tell them that they will not bear 
neglect, starvation, and generally bad treatment, 
as well as common Merinos. This would be 
true, and it is true of all improved animals, 
or for that matter, of all choice varieties of 
plants, seeds, and fruits. If Dr. Randall uses 
the term “ herding” in this sense, I quite agree 
with him; but it would be much better to use 
some other term, as this one conveys no distinct 
idea—or if it does, it is an erroneous one. It 
confounds cause and effect. Some one will be 
telling us by and by that Shorthorns and Devons 
will not “herd” as well as the Texas cattle— 
and there would be j ust as much sense and mean¬ 
ing in the term as there is when it is said that 
Cotswolds will not “ herd ” as well as Merinos. 
On Mr. Lawes’ farm at Rothamstead, the first 
winter I was there, one hundred and twenty 
Hampshire Down wether lambs were put “ on 
the boards,” under a thatched shed, about the 
first of October, and never taken out until they 
were ripe for the butcher; and to the best of my 
recollection the whole lot, at about a year old, 
averaged twelve stones, or 90 lbs. dressed weight 
each. I forget the exact size of the shed, but 
should say it was about 10 feet deep with a feed¬ 
ing trough in front; and that the length of the 
shed was only a little more than was necessary 
to allow each sheep to stand at the trough and 
eat. Never did sheep do better. “Ah, but,” I 
hear the Doctor reply, “ these were Hampshire 
Downs, and this breed ‘ herds ’ better than the 
Cotswolds.” But all that need be said in reply 
to this is that Mr. Lawes’ celebrated experi¬ 
ments on the “fattening qualities of the differ¬ 
ent breeds of sheep ” were made in similar 
sheds, and that the Cotswolds not only remained 
healthy, but gained much more than any other 
breed. Can you keep a greater weight of car¬ 
cass in one of these sheds with Merino sheep 
than with Cotswolds, and will they stand this 
kind of “herdiug” any better? Ask Jurian 
Winue. He feeds about a thousand sheep every 
winter, long-wools and Merinos, and keeps 
them in very close quarters, and the long-wools 
do better than the Meriuos—or at any rate, he 
says he can make twice as much money in fat¬ 
tening them as he can from the Merinos. But 
mark you, Mr. Wiune gives his sheep the best 
of care and attention, and this is all there is to 
the question. If they have the necessary food, 
given regularly and so distributed that each 
sheep can get its due proportion ; if their apart¬ 
ments are kept well ventilated, and free from all 
fermenting manure; long-wooled sheep will 
“herd” just as well or better than Merinos. Small 
flocks are desirable simply because of the great¬ 
er ease of attending to these particulars. 
The great secret of success in the winter fat¬ 
tening and management of sheep is to attend to 
them yourself. A hired man who will feed at 
a given hour every day, and in the accustomed 
order; who will exercise a little judgment as to 
the amount required—feeding a little more grain 
and hay during a cold, stormy day, than during 
a warm one; who will see that the sheep never 
want for water, and that they never have to 
drink water that is reduced almost to the freez¬ 
ing point by snow and ice, but who will, on the 
contrary, pump them fresh water three or four 
times a day, and always at a fixed hour; a man 
who knows how to fodder the sheep in such a 
way that they are tempted to eat as much as 
they can possibly digest, without leaving any 
to get stale in the racks; a man that will litter 
the sheds and yards two or three times a day, 
doing it with judgment, and never allowing any 
part to get dirty, but having at all times a nice, 
clean bed for the sheep to lie on ;—a man that 
will do all this, and who has a quick eye to de¬ 
tect the slightest symptoms of disease or lame¬ 
ness, want of appetite, derangement of the stom¬ 
ach and bowels, nervous restlessness, etc.;—a 
man that can tell, from the eyes and ears and 
general aspect that a sheep is not doing well, 
and who has promptness and energy to sepa¬ 
rate that sheep at once from the flock, and give 
it the requisite attention ;—a man, I say, that will 
do this, is a treasure indeed. I never hope to 
find such a man, ready made. Possibly by tak¬ 
ing a bright, intelligent boy that is willing to 
learn, you can educate him up to it. 
This is the real reason why so few of our 
breeders of improved stock ever attain eminent 
success. They are generally men of wealth who 
do not attend personally to their stock. They 
pay large prices for the best animals, but cannot 
get them properly attended to. Taking this 
view of the matter, does it not seem a pity that 
intelligent farmers who take care of their own 
animals should waste their time in attending 
poor stock? When we think how difficult it is 
to hire this kind of care, judgment, and atten¬ 
tion, it would seem that a farmer could raise 
much better animals than those breeders who 
leave their stock to the care of men not person¬ 
ally interested in them. 
“ I am surprised that you do not raise more 
roots and fat more cattle in winter,” said a Cana¬ 
dian farmer, who was here yesterday. I told 
him that raising roots was work that we were i 
not accustomed to, and that labor was so high 
we did not think it would pay. He said that 
on his farm, taking into consideration the ma¬ 
nure obtained and the condition of the land 
after the roots were removed, there was no other 
crop that paid so well. He raises about five acres 
of roots, puts about half of them into the bam 
cellar, or all it will hold, and pits the others in 
