Sheep—East Cascade Region.

Thriving flocks of 2000 sheep are found in the East Cascade region, but "wool-growing" is yet quite in its infancy. The plains and undulating grassy table-lands of the East Cascade region are especially cattle-lands; but bold page 84 hilly land with natural features, affording shelter from wind and weather, such as the sheep-farmer likes, can be found in many parts. Lower ground also, stony and dry, would answer well in this region for sheep, except, perhaps, the alkali lands, which, it is said, cause wool to be deficient in lustre and strength.

I have already spoken of the natural pasture, bunch-grass, as a prime grass for fattening all the year round, and as also being delicate and liable to be injured by close, continuous sheep-feeding.

There are various other good grasses—black sage, for instance, which sheep are very fond of—and my belief is that these grasses are in sufficient quantity on good natural sheep-runs to justify the expectation of sheep-farming being undertaken on a great scale.

I am quite aware it is one thing to have sheep merely as an adjunct to a farm or other establishment, or as fat stock for the markets, and quite another thing to establish a wool-producing sheep-station, distinctively on a secure and self-supporting footing. It is the latter undertaking I am thinking of.

Mr. A. C. Anderson, author of a Prize Essay on the country, and who has travelled much through it as an officer of the Hudson's Bay Company, says that he "can recall to mind extensive tracts which seem specially adapted for the pasturing of very extensive flocks."

The climate, though variable within certain limits, is, as already explained, on the whole, temperate in summer and winter; and, as a consequence, the grass is generally in such a state that the sheep would not lose condition. The soil in general is dry; the supply of pure water abundant.

Disease among the flocks now existing in the East Cascade region has been most rare. The sheep are not subject to that formidable enemy of the sheep-farmer, the scab.