The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1881-08-03
farm aud Garden.
conducted by DIR. THOMAS Pollard, State
Commissioner of Agriculture
Sheep Husbandry in Virginia.

last on this subject. We present now
the following very interesting extract
from "Sheep Husbandry for the South"
bv John D. Hayes, Secretary of the Ma
t;onal Association of Wool growers, pre-
Jared bv request of Hon. Alexander H.
Stenhens Gen. Gordon, and others. He
says:
practiced on these now waste pine lands,
It is believed that it will develop value
in them never yet conceived of. Sheep
farming has made the chalky downs Of
England, once arid wastes, gardens OF
verdure. There are no soils so respon-
.sive to manure as those of light sandy
character. The most productive lands
in all the United States are in Cam
bridge, Mass, where the writer resides
Originally sandy plains, bearing few
pitch pines, they have been converted
into market-gardens. Covered with glass
or hot beds, in the winter, and heaped
up with manure when the glass is re-
moved, they bear successive crops through
the whole year, and yield as high as 81
900 per acre is a year The Tertiary
lands of the South contain many ele-
ments wanting in our Northern pine
plains Especially in the subsidy, as they
contain organic remains A scientific
farmer in Louisiana regards the pine
lands, when made rich as they can be
with pine straw, folding sheep, and
plo.pghing in green crops to supply or
ganic matter, as the most pleasant lands
to cultivate, and the best lands in the
State.
1t is of such land as this that Long
fellow speaks in Evangeline-
Here no stony ground provokes the wrath of
Smoothly the ploughshare runs through the
soil, like keel through the water.
Sheep for naired husbandry.-Th
other and more important branch of
sheep husbandry, in its relations to the
improvement of country is that where
the culture of sheep is made auxiliary to
a mixed husbandry. The highest ad-
vantage of this system is the improve
ment of the land. AS this paper may
come under the eye of persons less famil-
lar with the subject than our habitual
readers, we may be allowed to repeat
facts before stated in our pages.
Sheep are the only animals which do
not exhaust the land upon which thew
feed, but permanently improveit. Horned
cattle, especially cows in milk, by con-
tinued grazing, ultimately exhaust the
pastures of their phosphates. In Eng
land, the pastures of the county of
Chester, famous as cheese district, are
kept up only by constant use of bone
dust Sheep, on the other hand, through
the peculiar nutritiousness of their
manure, and the facility with which it
is d stributed, are found to be the most
economical and certain means of con-
stantly renewing the productiveness of
the land. By the combination of sheep
husbandry with wheat-culture, lands in
Eng which, in the time of Elizabeth,
produced, on an average, 81 bushels of
wheat per acre, produce now over 80
bushels. For these reasons, a recent
practical writer in the Journal of the
Royal Agricultural Society of England,
declares that, while there is no profit
in growing sheep in England simply for
their mutton and wool, sheep husbandry
is still an indispensable necessity, as the
sole means of keeping up the land.
Experience in the United States leads
to similar conclusions Mr.. Stilson, OF
Wisconsin, by keeping sheep, is able to
raise his "a bushels of wheat to the acre,
while the average yield of wheat in Wis
consin Is but 10 bushels. There are
cases in Vermont where sheep-farmers
have been compelled to abandon one
farm after another, as they become too
fertile for profitable sheep growing. Mr..
George Geddes whom Horace Greeley
used to regard as the highest authority
on agricultural matters in the State Of
New York, and who has raised sheen
Tor many years in. connection with wheat
says that with one sheep to the acre Of
cultivated land, pasture, and meadows
ne raises more bushels of grain on the
average than he did when he had no
sheep to manufacture his coarse FORAGE
into manure, and to enrich his pastures
to prepare them for the grain crop that
the land is constantly improving, and
the crop increasing in quantity; and that
while producing crops on less acres and
at less cost than he did before he kept
sheep, he has, IN addition, the eOooL ana
me mutton produced By tie sheen.
Mr.. William Chamberlain. of Red
Hook, Duchess County, New York
celebrated as grower Of Silesian sheen
purchased in 1910 farm in that place
OF $50 acres, which had been used so lone
10 TOR selling hay that it was worn out