Sheep As A Cleansing Crop

How to clear our pastures of brush anc weeds is a very important question in al our grazing distriots. As a matter o tact, upon most dairy farms it require the utmost vigilanco and considerable ei pense annually in outting brush to keer them clean. The grazing of cows anc young cattle alone will not clean the lan t'rouj brush and weed. Patches of bri ers, whoitloberry, swect fern, hazelnuts scrub-oak, or other brush spring up, au( spread year by year until the graas i ei owded out, and the land is covered with forest-trees. In inany of the older State there are large traots of land now coveret with timber, that forty yeare ago were ii pasture. In the case of rough, hilly lanc that can never be plowed, this return to forest is often desirable. But a certain portion of every farm is needed for past ure, and if animáis can be substituted for human labor in killing brush and weeds it is exceedingly desirable to know it We recently visited two farms lying side by side, with no perceptible difference in the quality or moisture of the soil. The pasture lands were only eeparated by a stone fence, but something much broader than a fence line had separated the management of the two farmers. The one pasture had been grazed by cattle for i long term of years, and the policy had gone to seed in a magnificent growth oi alders, whortleberry brush, young maples, vervain, thistles, and golden rod, briors and other brush and weeds. There were patches of grass in porhaps one quarter of the field, where the cows got a scanty living. The other pasture, in addition to its cattle, had the constant treac of a flock of one hundred and sixty sheep, and their hoofs in this case had certainly been gold. Besides all the wool, mutton and lauibs sold from the flock, they hac paid for their keeping every year in freeing the pasture of brush and coarse weeds, and in enriohing it with their manuro. There was no brush of any considerable eize, and very few weeds. And we loarned froin the proprietor that sheep were the only agents used in keeping the field clean. They had nibbled the young shoots every year as they started, and what they had not killed outright by this cropping they had kept even with the grass. There was good feed in evory part of the pasture, even late in the f all, and the owner of this farm used this contrast bet ween the adjoining pastures as a standing argument in favor of sheep husbandry. It is very much to the point. If it is true, as George Geddes asserts, that sheep in certnin proportion to cattlo pay their way in a pasture naturally lean, they must pay much better in pastures inclined to produce brush and weeds. We have had ocasión to notice the beneficial effects of the grazing of sheep upon another farm that has been under observation several years. They have not only subdued sweet fern, briers, and thistles, but have greatly improved the grasses. The sod is much thicker and heavier, and white clover has come in where once it made no show at all. In pastures where the brush are already strong, and higher than the sheep can reach, it cannot be expeoted that they will conquer. But if the brush be out for a season or two, and the sheep turned in sulficient numbers upon the young growth, they will keep it under and oveutually destroy it. This is much cheaper than tbe use of the scythe and