Note 56 — Chapter III

Probably the sheep would pay better if kept more as cattle are kept. The theory of long marches only applies to enormous flocks, so thick upon the ground that they must walk miles a day, eating all the time. If the whole herd of sheep on a large sheep-farm were divided into many small flocks, and the farm into, say, ten times as many pastures, each flock might be turned for two days into each pasture, so that it would have three weeks’ growth on it before the flock returned: or, if large enough to feed the sheep twenty days, it would have twenty weeks in which to recover—time to grow a crop of leguminous fodder, after which a splendid crop, or series of crops, of cereals could be grown upon it. Under such a system the sheep would wander less, fatten quickly and be more tender. English sheep-farming is on an infinitesimal scale, but the profits from a small flock changed from pasture to pasture are often very considerable.—[Trans.]