THE AURAL NEW-YORKER. 
3T3 
SOUTHDOWN RAM CARDIFF. 
This fine ram, shown at Fig. 244, is the pro¬ 
perty of the Prince of Wales. Cardi ff ha-s won 
numberless honors at stock exhibitions, and 
now heads the fine flock at the Royal Sheep 
Farm at Sandringham, where the supply of 
choice mutton for the Prince’s tables is secur¬ 
ed. The Prince of Wales may not be much of 
a farmer, but he ought to be a good judge of 
mutton; and the fact that South Downs have 
been kept so many years at Sandriugham, 
speaks volumes in favor of this breed. We are 
told that the sole idea in breeding and select¬ 
ing this flock has been to improve the quality 
of the mutton. The size and shape, ami the 
wool product have hardly been considered. 
As a result of this select ion, a flock has been 
formed which, in all probability, cannot be sur¬ 
passed for the excellence of its mutton, Lord 
Beaconstield once said that “our fathers laud¬ 
ed venison so highly for no better reason than 
because they never knew what good mutton 
really was.” We may well believe that San¬ 
dringham mutton would quickly cure a taste 
for game. The sheep in this flock are fed on 
grass almost entirely. They run on the salt 
marshes during the Winter, except when the 
snow is on the ground. Every night, they are 
brought back to the uplands and folded upon 
a field from which mangels have been drawn. 
A veiy few roots are fed, and at lambing time 
each ewe gets a small feed of oil-cake. Aside 
from this, the feed is entirely made up of 
grass and hay. The folding at 
night, done by means of portable 
fences, keeps the fields well en- 
riehed with comparatively little 
trouble. The earliest lambs come 
about the middle of February. 
The ewes appear to he very proli¬ 
fic, as 240 of them produced, last 
year, 800 lambs, and only six 
ewes were lost. The salt marsh is 
said to be very healthy for the 
sheep. There was hardly a case 
of lameness or stiff joints, while 
sore feet or rheumatism were un¬ 
known. The ewes with the most 
promising lambs are removed from 
the main flock and permitted to 
range by themselves. The others 
run in small bonds in company 
with the young heifers or colts. 
It is said that these South Downs 
will ripen into the choicest of meat 
where the heavier breeds would 
starve: while the shepherds at San¬ 
driugham declare that they can 
keep five of these where three 
others w*uld starve. 
TICK PERSECUTION. 
COL. F. D. CURTIS. 
There were more sheep ticks last 
year than ever before. Where 
they all came from is a mystery. gQ 
It is said, by old farmers, that 
when sheep run in the woods they 
will always get full of ticks. My sheep did 
run in the woods, and they were very ticky. 
This fact might prove the theory, but other 
people’s sheep did not run in the woods, and 
they were also very ticky. I think condition 
has more to do with ticks and with the effects 
from the weather also. Thin stock always 
seem to Invite parasites of all kinds. This is 
the case with cattle mid the lice which infest 
them, and also with hogs: and why not with 
heepf I think sheep were universally poorer 
the past Autumn and Winter than I ever saw 
them. The reason for this condition was the 
excessively cold anil wot season, which is op- 
posed to sheep doing well. The Spring, a year 
ago, was cold, wet and backward, mid sheep 
carried their fleeces very late. This helped to 
lay a foundation for ticks, as it helped to make 
the sheep poor. The food sheep eat helps the 
tick business. If sheep are so fed as to be 
puny, they will have more ticks; these seem to 
delight in a poor condition and to want to be 
in at the deat h, to help finish up the poor crea¬ 
ture they are preying upon. 
The remedy for these depleting and destruc¬ 
tive posts is care and sheep clip. The famous 
sheep breeders ol' Washington County, Penn¬ 
sylvania, do not have any ticks on their sheep. 
They will not have any, So it. seems resolu¬ 
tion helps to keep clear of them. I have 
adopted the same idea, and have resolved to 
to try to carry it out. To do this involves 
early shearing, which has been done, and as 
soon os the weather will admit, each sheep 
and lamb will be dipped in 1 .gwford's Sheep 
Dip, and again in the Autumn, and perhaps 
twice if necessary. The poor sheep should be 
put by themselves, aud the best place for them is 
on some one else’s farm, and if that cannot be 
done, in a pen by themselves, The amount of 
blood a good crop of sheep ticks will extract 
from a sheep or lamb is much more than a per¬ 
son imagines, and is always equal to the gain 
the infected aud afflicted animal might make 
if the leeches were not at work. Unless the 
sheep are extra well fed they will run down 
rapidly, and they never gain anything, how¬ 
ever well fed. The farmer should never neg¬ 
lect Ills sheep and allow these parasites to 
prey on them. They make the poor sheep mad 
with pain, I sheared a lot of sheep almost in 
midwinter to get the best of the ticks, aud if it 
had not been done, the animals would have 
died, as they ran down in spite of food. 
After sheep have been sheared the ticks go 
on the lambs, to return to the sheep when the 
wool gets out. 
The dipping should take place in about two 
weeks after shearing, and care should be taken 
not I/O let the sheep get its nostrils under the 
liquid. Fools aud boys should not dip sheep; 
it should be douo by careful and humane men. 
The owner should be on hand to attend to the 
business the same as when sheep are washed. 
It is barbarism to set a lot of crazy boys and 
reckless men to do such work. The liquid may 
be put in a tub aud the sheep dipped in and 
well saturated. It should then be lifted on a 
tight platform, slanting towards the tub, and 
allowed to drain off, the liquid running back 
into the tub. The waste of tobacco strips 
boiled does very well, if the decoction is just 
strong enough to kill the ticks and not to in¬ 
jure the sheep; but I prefer the sheep dip as 
safest aud much less troublesome. 
of farming, makes a sad blunder. Instead of 
making contented and successful farmers of 
them, he is almost certain to educate them 
away from the farm, and, still worse, out of 
all sympathy and happy social relationship 
with himself. To give them a schooling which, 
under such circumstances, is quite likely to 
prove a real disadvantage to them, he relin¬ 
quishes that parental influence over them 
which it is his highest duty to maintain and 
carefully exercise, and allows himself, his 
farm, and his home to degenerate into objects 
only too well calculated to deter aspiring 
young mpii from engaging in agricultural pur¬ 
suits. This is penny wisdom aud pound fool¬ 
ishness in a most exaggerated form. 
I would not, by any means, be understood to 
say that the farmer who desires his boys to be 
farmers, should never send them to academy 
or college. A LberaJ education is as great a 
benefit to a practical fanner as to auy other 
business man. It is my object simply to em¬ 
phasize the fact that it is never advisable for 
any man to undertake to lift his children onto 
a social plane above his own at the expense of 
his own comfort and advancement. It is, of 
course, natural and commendable for a father 
to wish his children to rise in the world, but it 
is the very essence of folly for him to make a 
tilting board of his life and seek to raise them 
into prominence by the dead weight of his own 
deterioration. The only safe course for him 
to pursue is that he should himself climb to 
the level he would have them occupy, and 
draw them up with him by the simple force of 
his love and example. If by their own efforts 
they finally reach bights which he cannot 
ITHDOWN RAM, CARDIFF. 
Fig. 244. 
educational. 
EDUCATING BOYS FOR THE FARM. 
A. DWINELL. 
To educate his children the father must edu¬ 
cate himself; drawbacks to acadentic and 
collegiate education; children shouldn't be 
so highly educated as to look down on their 
father or his calling; don't sink , that they 
may rise; parental influence must be main¬ 
tained; pleasant early impressions form 
strong; bonds of attachment to farm life; 
educate for work ahead; with good early 
training , later forms of education are mat¬ 
ters of minor importance. 
Ira farmer wishes to so educate 1 : s boys 
that they may become good and contented fol¬ 
lowers of his own calling, his first step should 
he to educate himself. In order that he may 
make successful farmers of them, he must huu- 
self have a just understanding of the possibili¬ 
ties of liis vocation, and a genuine love for 
farm work. He must be wide-awake, enter¬ 
prising, and always progressive; and, above 
all, he must be his sons’ most efficient aud best 
loved batcher. The farmer who neglects to 
improve his own mind and manners, who 
rigidly economizes and pinches in every invi¬ 
sible way, who allows his home to fall into 
decay, become shabby, uninviting, and cheer¬ 
less, that he may save money enough to send 
his boys away from home to the academy or 
to the agrieulturaljcollege to^learn the science 
Re-engraved from the London Live Stock Journal 
attain, well and good; but, be that as it may, 
his own struggle for self-improvement should 
on no account be given up except with life. 
If a fanner is able to give his sous a collegi¬ 
ate education without pinching himself, it 
may be well for him to do so. Before decid¬ 
ing upon the step, however, he should take 
into careful consideration the influences to 
which a college student is at the present day 
exposed. Whatever may be said to the con¬ 
trary, it is a fact that alt our higher institu¬ 
tions of learuiug are pervaded by a certain 
atmosphere, the legitimate influence of which 
seems to be to create in the student who 
breathes it a distaste for agricultural pur- 
suits. The sensitive aud ambitious young 
college student, as a general rule, speedily be¬ 
comes possessed of the notion that the labor 
of tilling the soil is low, unfavorable to intel¬ 
lectual growth, and a well-nigh insurmount¬ 
able bar to social and political advancement. 
Unless the farmer, by virtue of his superior 
force of character, high intellectual attain¬ 
ments and social standing, has sufficient in¬ 
fluence over his boys to neutralize this influ¬ 
ence of the schools, if he is bent upon making 
fanners of them, he had better keep them 
away from even the agricultural college. 
Very few college-bred men have become 
farmers; and of the few who have scarcely 
one can be found who passed his boyhood 
amidst the surroundings and influences of the 
ordinary farmer’s home. This is not to be 
very much wondered at. Humiliating as the 
admission may be, there certainly is very 
little in the work or actual compensations of 
the average farmer to attract or satisfy an 
energetic young man whose intellectual 
powers have been awakened by an academic 
course of training, and it Is not of much use 
to talk to a college graduate who was reared 
in the stifling social and mental atmosphere, 
which is only too often allowed to settle upon 
the farmer’s isolated home, about the possibil¬ 
ities or the future of agricultiu’e. The im¬ 
pressions left by the experiences of childhood 
are difficult to erase. Upon the character of 
those impressions in a great measure depends 
the future of our boys. If we succeed in mak¬ 
ing farming attractive to them: if we show 
them by our own example and achievements— 
by our own intellectual attainments and social 
successes—that there is really uothing in the 
work of the farmer to prevent his becoming 
the equal of other business men, or to hinder 
his acquiring as great comforts, social privi¬ 
leges and political influence as the successful 
professional man, mechanic or merchant, we 
may hope to make farmers of them. If we 
fail to do this, we have no reason to complain 
if they leave the farm and engage in other 
and more satisfactory pursuits. To teach a 
full-grown farmer's boy, in an agricultural 
college supported by legislative appropriations, 
how to make farming attractive and profit¬ 
able, will be found of little avail when his ex¬ 
perience of farm life has been such as to make 
him hate it 
That education is best for any boy w hich 
best fits him for his chosen work. The founda¬ 
tion for such an education must be an intelli¬ 
gent liking for that work. The laying of this 
foundation for the education that is to fit his 
boys for the business of the agriculturist, is 
the most important duty of every farmer. If 
this duty is faithfully performed, 
the building of the superstructure 
will be found comparatively easy. 
When a boy of ordinary intelli¬ 
gence has acquired a hearty liking 
for the work of the farmer, and 
acquired it in what may be termed 
the natural way—in the healthy, 
bracing atmosphere of a well 
managed farm home—the question 
of his school training need occasion 
very little anxiety. In his case, 
scarcely any practicable school¬ 
ing will be found greatly amiss. 
The chief difficulty about the 
education of the farmer’s boys, 
then, as it seems to me, lies in the 
failure of the farmer himself to 
understand- and intelligently per¬ 
form his duty in the premises. 
Whatever course of schooling the 
embryo farmer may subsequently 
take, the most important part of 
his education, the fart which is 
to have the greatest influence in 
shaping his career as a mau, ought 
to be that which he receives at 
home from his parents, aud from 
the practical experiences of every¬ 
day farm life. The knowledge 
gained here is woven into the very 
substance of his brain and muscle, 
and becomes as much a part of 
himself and as completely under 
his control as his hand, eye, or 
tongue. The consequences of any 
defect in his training here will fol¬ 
low him through life. No other 
teachers, however gifted, can 
ever fill the place in the education 
of a farmer’s boy that should be 
filled by his parents. No other 
school, however excellent, can fill 
the place that should be filled by 
irnal. his father's farm. 
If all our formers could'be 
brought to realize these facts, in 
all their bearings, I am sure the dishearten¬ 
ing complaint that all our brightest 
and most enterprising young men are 
leaving the farms, would soon cease. If the 
father can be aroused to a full sense of the 
duty he owes his boys; if he sees to it that 
their first impressions of farm life are of the 
right character; if he gives to their first men¬ 
tal growth its proper training; and, above all, 
if he so orders his own life as to be always 
able to retain that influence over them which 
every father should have over his sons, it 
does” not seriously matter what particular 
course of study they pursue at the academy or 
agricultural college, or whether they go to 
such schools at all. An academic course of 
training has its advantages, but Is by no means 
essential to a high degree of success in life. It 
is example, and not theory, that the agricul¬ 
tural student of to-day most needs. Ho must 
see farming made attractive and profitable, 
as well as hear that such a thing is possible. 
The influences of his home-life, therefore, are 
of vastly more consequence to the farmer's 
boy who is to bea farmer, than the influence 
of ail the schools in Christendom. 
Cheshire Co., N. H. 
The Harlem Commons Syndicate is the 
name by which a little clique Y>f claimants for 
a large section of upper New York seek to 
turn their claims into cash at an early day. by 
obtaiuiug money from all who may think that 
it would pay thorn to claim relationship, and 
trust to big promises and the law's uncertainty 
for a great future reward. The syndicate 
was organized last December, its object being 
to get from Now York City a large part of 
