148 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
oats may yield bountifully when wheat is struck with blight; 
beef, mutton, pork and wool can nearly always be raised with 
profit ; but he, who confines his operations to the raising of 
cereals alone, sometimes meets with almost entire failure to 
which the man who carries on all the various branches of hus¬ 
bandry is never subjected. 
We think that for every eight or ten acres composing a farm, 
at least one head of horned cattle and three sheep, exclusive 
of calves and lambs, should be kept. Many more might be 
kept with proper management. 
From the census of 1870, we gather the fact that 101,884,678 
pounds of wool were raised in that year, in the United States, 
being a little over 2f pounds to each person in the country; a 
quantity far less than is required for use. We have no desire, 
in a purely agricultural paper, to touch upon questions of for¬ 
eign or domestic policy, or of political economy. We merely 
state the fact, to show that the keeping of sheep must be emi¬ 
nently profitable, seeing that we raise less wool than the home 
•consumption requires, whereas we grow a large surplus of al¬ 
most every other agricultural product. 
Aside from this, we are fully convinced that no sort of 
stock is, agriculturally speaking, so beneficial as sheep. They 
improve all the lands on which they graze. Much might be 
said of the beneficial effects resulting from the keeping of 
sheep. They can thrive on herbage that would be too thin 
and too short for the grazing of cattle; they can dispense 
with water when the dews are abundant, although water is of 
course preferable; they increase more rapidly than other 
stock, because they attain their maturity much earlier, and 
are more prolific ; altogether, we think they return the largest 
profits for investment, care and keeping. Some one has said 
very truly, that sheep leave a track of gold wherever they 
tread. 
We had designed, in commencing this writing, to allude to 
the management of the wood lot, without which a farm can 
hardly be considered complete, and to the wholesale destruction 
of timber that is constantly going on in our state, as well as 
