An abundant supply of water he thought of great importance.
[Illustration: INDIAN SWEAT-HOUSE.] Of course, where the sheep are turned out into fenced land no shepherds are required, which makes an important saving.

One man, with a horse, visits the different flocks, and can look after ten or fifteen thousand head.
The farmer whom I have quoted does not dip his sheep to prevent or cure scab, but mops the sore place, when he discovers a scabby sheep, with a sponge dipped into the scab-mixture.
He gets, he told me, from his flock of ten thousand merinoes, an average of seven pounds per head of wool, and he does not shear any except the lambs, in the fall.

It is a common but bad practice here to shear all sheep twice a year; and where, as is too often the case, a flock is very scabby, no doubt this is necessary.
He had long sheds as shelter for his ewes about lambing-time, so as to protect them against fierce winds and cold rain storms; and he saved every year about two hundred tons of hay, cut from the wild pastures, to feed in case the rain should hold off uncommonly late.

His aim was to keep the sheep always in good condition, so that there should never be any weak place in the wool.

His sheds cost him about one dollar per running foot.
The sheep found their own way to them.
I find it is the habit of the forehanded sheep-grazers in the Sacramento Valley to own a range in the foot-hills and another on the bottom-lands.
During the summer the sheep are kept in the bottoms, which are then dry and full of rich grasses; in the fall and winter they are taken to the uplands, and there they lamb, and are shorn.