Rams should not be suffered to run with the ewes over a month, at least in the Northern States. It is much better that a ewe go dry than that she have a lamb later than the first of June. Besides, after the rutting season is over, the rams grow cross, frequently striking the pregnant ewes dangerous blows with their heavy horns, at the racks and troughs. It is reasonably enough conjectured, that if procreation and the first period of gestation take place in cold weather, the f[oe]tus will be fitted for the climate which rules during the early stages of its existence. If this be so--and it is certainly in accordance with the laws of Nature--fine-woolled sheep are most likely to maintain their excellence by deferring the connection of the male till the commencement of cold weather; and, in the Northern States, this is done about the first of December, thus bringing the yeaning time in the last of April, or the first of May, when the early grass affords a large supply and good quality of food. LAMBING. [Illustration: EWE AND LAMBS.] The ewe goes with young about five months, varying from one hundred and forty-five to one hundred and sixty-two days. Pregnant ewes require the same food as at all other times. Until two or three weeks preceding lambing, it is only necessary that they, like other store-sheep, be kept in good, plump, ordinary condition; nor are any separate arrangements necessary for them after that period, in a climate where they obtain sufficient succulent food to provide for a proper secretion of milk. In backward seasons in the North, where the grass does not start prior to the lambing-time, careful farmers feed their ewes on chopped roots, or roots mixed with oat and pea-meal, which is excellent economy. Caution is, however, necessary to prevent injury or abortion, which is often the result of excessive fat, feebleness, or disease. The first may be remedied by blood-letting and spare diet; and both the last by restored health and generous food. Sudden frights, as from dogs or strange objects; long or severe journeys, great exertions, unwholesome food, blows in the region of the f[oe]tus, and some other causes, produce abortion. Lambs are usually dropped, in the North, from the first to the fifteenth of May; in the South, they can safely come earlier. It is not expedient to have them dropped when the weather is cold or boisterous, as they require too much care; but the sooner the better, after the weather has become mild, and the herbage has started sufficiently to give the ewes that green food which is required to produce a plentiful secretion of milk. It is customary, in the North, to have fields of clover, or the earliest grasses, reserved for the early spring-feed of the breeding-ewes; and, if these can be contiguous to their stables, it is a great convenience--for the ewes should be confined in the latter, on cold and stormy nights, during the lambing season.