less by five or six cents per pound than that of the
Sacramento Valley; and this is due in part to the soil and climate, and in
part to the fact that sheep are more carefully kept in the northern part
of the State.

Many of the sheep farmers in the Sacramento Valley have entirely done away
with the mischievous practice of corraling their sheep--confining them
at night, I mean, in narrow, crowded quarters--a practice which makes and
keeps the sheep scabby. They very generally fence their lands, and thus
are able to save their pasture and to manage it much more advantageously.
They seem to me more careful about overstocking than sheep farmers
generally are in the southern part of the State, though it should be
understood that such men as Colonel Hollester, Colonel Diblee, Dr. Flint,
and a few others in the South, who, like these, have exceptionally fine
ranges, keep always the best sheep in the best manner. But smaller tracks,
sown to alfalfa, are found to pay in the valleys where the land can be
irrigated.

In Australia and New Zealand sheep inspectors are appointed, who have
the duty to examine flocks and force the isolation of scabby sheep; and
a careless flock-master who should be discovered driving scabby sheep
through the country would be heavily fined; here the law says nothing
on this head, but I have found this spring several sheep owners in the
Sacramento Valley who assured me that they had eradicated scab so entirely
from their flocks that they dealt also by isolation with such few single
specimens as they found to have this disease.

Moreover, I find that the best sheep farmers aim to keep, not the largest
flocks, but the best sheep. There is no doubt that the sheep deteriorates
in this State unless it is carefully and constantly bred up. "We must
bring in the finest bucks from Australia, or the East, or our own State,"
said one very successful sheep farmer to me; "and we must do this all the
time, else our flocks will go back." "It is more profitable to keep fewer
sheep of the best kind than more not quite so good. It is more profitable
to keep a few sheep always in good condition than many with a period of
semi-starvation for them in the fall," said another; and added, "I would
rather, if I were to begin over again, spend my money on a breed worth six
dollars a head, than one worth two or three dollars, and I would rather
not keep sheep at all than not fence." He had his land--about twenty-five
thousand a