IN all ages has the sheep been a prominent representative of rural husbandry.  From the time of the patriarchs it has parted with its coat to furnish man a covering, yielded its flesh to renew his muscular tissues, and even given him a standard of value and a medium of exchange. Eccentric John Randolph, as a narrow politician, hating bitterly a manufacturing policy, could indeed declare he would at any time go a mile out of his way “to kick a sheep;” but intelligent farmers, from the time when old Fitzherbert asserted that “sheep is the most profitablest cattle that a man can have,” down to the present hour, are unanimous in giving sheep husbandry a front rank in the industries of agriculture.

In early days, while a command to man to “increase and multiply” was religiously obeyed, it became the destiny of the sheep mainly to feed and clothe his offspring.

Youth found familiar companionship with the pet lambs of the flock; beauty, with the low voice and gentle manner of woman, led them to the green oasis and the deep well; the manly shepherd watched over them, and carried the weary to places of safety; amd all found in them food, clothing, wealth, and emblems of gentleness and innocence.

And it is noteworthy as it is true, that the animal best suited to the primal condition of man in his nomadic state should be the one most profitable and most necessary to the highest condition of improved farm culture. As an investment the sheep yields a quick return, and gives it in many ways, viz: a large percentage of its value yearly in wool; lambs, in many cases doublets, sometimes twice, yearly; manure, of superior quality, little liable to fermentation and loss from ordinary exposure; when dead, flesh, nutritious and healthful, produced at less cost than pork and beef; and pelts, always salable and valuable.

Here are “quick returns and large profits.” And the profits are all the larger, because less care, less shelter, less succulent and nutritious herbage, are required, than for any other animal.

The successful amateur English farmer, Mechi, says that beef must sell twenty per cent. higher than mutton to make them of equal profit. And in many sections of this country, according to intelligent observers, mutton can be produced at little more than half the cost of pork; while it is equally valuable as food, and more healthful. While sheep are found to represent largely the wealth of primitive agriculture, they only receive their highest development and attain their largest measure of utility and profit under the most intelligent husbandry, in communities sustaining the highest forms of civilization.

As an article of food mutton may almost be said to be an index of civilization, the popular taste by degrees tending from grosser food, as rudeness in primitive society gradually gives way to refinement.

The editor of the Southern Cultivator once said, in rebuke of the vulgar taste that preferred the increase of packs of worthless dogs to the safety and improvement of sheep:  "Civilization has to be further advanced than it would be proper to name before a community will think as much of sheep as it does of dogs.” The history of this branch of stock-growing in this country sustains such theory.

The sheep of this country known as “native” stock are mainly of English origin, mingled to some extent with continental blood, and are called "natives,” simply to distinguish them from Merinos and more recently imported and improved breeds.

Those originally introduced into New York were from Holland. The English were long-legged, narrow-breasted, light-quartered, coarse-woolled animals, hardy, roving in habit, wild as the mountain sheep, but excellent breeders and good mothers.

Twelve pounds per quarter was a fair average for them.. There were some exceptional flocks, exhibiting pretty strong indications of excellences since brought out in improved breeds. They cannot be claimed as a distinct breed, being doubtless almost as various as our flocks of the present day, each emigrant carrying with him his favorite sheep. Mr. Youatt speaks of a portion of them as a “coarse kind of Leicester.” Mr. Livingston, in his “Essay on Sheep,” saw in some of them a strong resemblance to the South Downs.

It was natural that colonists, peopling a wilderness in a climate of greater rigor than that from which they came, with a wise reference to clothing as well as food, should give particular attention to the introduction of sheep; hence it is written, as early as 1676, that “New England abounds in sheep.”

In 1790, in New Netherlands, (New York,) they were kept somewhat extensively, throve well, became fat, and multiplied; but the depredations of wolves, and the loss of wool by brush and tangled thickets, were serious drawbacks upon sheep-raising.

The yield of wool at this date was two to three and a half pounds in the hands of good farmers; the general average was doubtless less. In the hands of good farmers now, improved flocks yield an average of four, five, and six pounds, and very much more in some cases; yet the census returns for 1860 make an average of less than three pounds, which is an improvement upon 1850, as that census showed a similar advance from 1840.

James S. Grinnell, in the report of the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture for 1860, says the “native sheep” of that State “were of two kinds:
one with white faces, and the other with dark faces and legs; the first seem to have been preserved in the eastern part of the State and on the islands, while the latter have been known in the valley of the Connecticut by the name of “English smuts,” or “Irish smuts.” These last may have been South Downs, imported before the improvement of that celebrated breed, as they bear many of their characteristics, and might, had they been bred with the care and perseverance which the South Downs received, have been a most valuable breed.  The wool of these sheep was suited only to the manufacture of coarse fabrics, and supplied the material for the home manufactures, in which almost every family participated, furnishing all woollens used, except fine cloths imported from the mother country.

The mutton was mostly of coarse quality, and by no means a favorite article of diet.  Some of if, however, was fat enough; "so exceeding fat that it was too luscious and offensive,” according to Vanderdonk’s description of some of the Dutch sheep in “New Netherlands.”  Its unpopularity was doubtless owing partly to inferior quality and partly to a taste uncultivated in mutton fancying.  The stock of a hundred years since is nearly extinct, or so modified by crossing, first with the Spanish Merino, to some slight degree with French and Saxon, and subsequently with the South Down, the Leicester, and other breeds, as to partake little of its original characteristics.

The sheep-farmer will not regret their utter extinction, if displaced by breeds superior in wool, flesh, and aptitude to fatten.

The fine-woolled sheep of Spain have been famous for centuries. Those of Castile and Leon, the “Transhumantes,” or travelling flocks, bear the largest and finest fleeces. Those of Soria have very fine wool upon an inferior carcase, while those of Valencia have a fine wool of short staple; in both of these districts the flocks are stationary. Jorvellanes, a Spanish writer, estimating the migratory sheep at five millions, has deplored the injury to husbandry by the monopoly (under royal protection) of all the best pastures in the kingdom, the enjoyment of special privileges in travelling to and from these summer mountain pastures, and- the consequent banishment of stationary flocks and the depopulation of the country; and all for the advantage of a few aristocratic proprietors. This superior breed of travelled sheep is divided into several families; the Escurial, with wool of excelling fineness; the Guadaloupe, noted for symmetry of form, fine quality and good quantity of wool, with an awkward enlargement of the throat and a hairy appearance in the lambs; the Negretti, the largest and strongest of the migratory sheep; the Infantados, Aqueirres, Paulars, Montarcos, and others.

The Merinos vary greatly, not only in Spain, as might be expected with so many different families, but in the different countries into which they have been introduced. Still they retain, in a remarkable degree, the prominent peculiarities of the breed—fineness of wool, comparatively small size, short legs, a fine eye, a bold step, hardiness, and longevity. Compared with recent improvements in mutton-breeds, the legs, it is true, might seem long, but they are shorter than the unimproved sheep.

The first Spanish sheep brought to this country were two ewes and a ram, smuggled on shipboard (for their exportation was at that time prohibited) by Wm. Foster, a young gentleman of Boston, travelling in Europe. They arrived safely and were presented to Andrew Craigie, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, who, tiring of their care and ignorant of their value, ate them, and subsequently paid $1,000 for a Merino ram.  In 1801, Dupont de Nemours, with a Parisian banker named Delissert, shipped four ram lambs to this country, but one of which, “Don Pedro,” a fine animal, weighing 138 pounds and bearing a fleece of 8 pounds 8 ounces when thoroughly washed, lived to arrive, and was used in New York until 1808, and then became the property of E. I. Dupont, living near Wilmington, Delaware, where he founded a valuable flock for his owner.

In 1801, also, Seth Adams, of Zanesville, Ohio, is said to have imported a pair. In 1802, Chancellor Livingston, American minister at France, sent to his farm in New York two pairs of Merinos, from the French national flock at Chalons. Colonel David Humphreys, of Connecticut, American minister at Spain, brought home, in the same year, a flock of Spanish sheep. Mr. Muller imported a pair in 1807, which were kept near Philadelphia.

In 1809 and 1810, Wm. Jarvis, consul at Lisbon, shipped three thousand eight hundred and fifty to the United States, to be distributed, fifteen hundred in New York; one thousand in Boston and Newburyport; the remainder to Philadelphia, Baltimore, Alexandria, Norfolk, and Richmond, reserving three hundred and fifty for himself, half Paulars, one-fourth Aqueirres, the other fourth Escurials, Negrettis, and Mentarcos, which latter were bred together.

These flocks were obtainable in consequence of the French invasion of Spain and royal destitution of money or resources, occasioning the sale of the confiscated flocks and other property of four grandees, viz: the Prince of Peace, owning the Paulars; the Conde Campo de Alange, proprietor of the Negrettis; the Conde de Aqueirres, and the Conde de Montarco. There were fifty thousand; five thousand of each of the former two, and twenty thousand of each of the latter two. About twenty thousand five hundred were sold, the remainder consumed in the supply department of the Spanish army.

In addition to those sent by Mr. Jarvis, other individuals, in 1810, sent two thousand and five hundred, all of Leonese blood, of the first flocks of Spain. Subsequently frequent importations were made.

The French Merinos, a family established from the Spanish, under imperial protection and with peculiar management, were larger than their progenitors, with good but not the best wool, a loose skin disposed in pendulous folds, and a very heavy fleece, very yolky, with little external gum. In 1796 the average weight of fleece was 6 lbs. 9 oz; in 1797, 8 lbs; 1798, 7 lbs; 1799, 8 lbs; 1800, 8 lbs.; 1801, 9 lbs. 1 oz. In later years rams have sheared from 18 to 24 lbs. These fleeces would shrink one-half in washing. Mr. Livingston made the shrinkage sixty per cent. High feeding, and a general forcing process in their subsequent development, whie it gave larger animals and more wool, resulted in diminished hardiness, poorer quality of wool, and unevenness of fleece. French Merinos ice now unpopular and are very generally discarded, so that traces of their blood yet remaining in the country are rapidly disappearing.

The sheep of Saxony, originally introduced by the Elector of Saxony from Spain, are regarded as a distinct breed, yet are properly a branch of the Merino family. They are remarkable for the exceeding fineness of their wool; but their fleeces are 80 light and thin, and their constitution so fragile from extreme tenderness of treatment, that they are not generally regarded as a reliable or profitable breed for the rough sheep husbandry and rougher climate of this country. Their fleeces average little more than two pounds.

They were first introduced into this country by Samuel Henshaw, of Boston, in 1823. In 1824 the Messrs. Searle, of Boston, imported seventy-seven; and in the same year, in connexion with Mr. Henry D. Grove, nearly two hundred more. In the following years, up to 1828, numerous importations were made, when their popularity began to decline.

This offshoot from the Spanish stock, originating some fifty years ago from a flock of Infantado ewes and Negretti bucks imported into Silesia, has become a breed of considerable note, bearing wool of an exquisite fineness. Mr. Randall, in his recent admirable treatise on fine wool sheep husbandry, deems them peculiarly fitted to the office of improving coarse families of Merinos in evenness and fineness of fleece. They are as large as the American Merinos, the fleece yolky and dark colored, but destitute of gum. They are claimed to be hardy, having been bred with skill and care, but not pampered in feeding.

The American Merinos should be referred to as a self-sustaining and distinct variety of the original race, though adhering more closely to its peculiar characteristics than its kindred sketched in the preceding paragraphs. The American Merinos are classified in three prominent families—the Jarvis, the American Infantado, (Atwood,) and the Paular sheep.

The Jarvis are the result of the mixture of the several Leonese varieties.  Without following the indiscriminate course of French breeders, which has resulted in utterly destroying all uniformity or fixity of character in any important point, Mr. Jarvis was induced, according to the authority of his son, in opposition to his better judgment, to heed the importunity of the manufacturers for a quality of wool resembling the Saxon, and to select bucks from whatever source seemed likely to effect his purpose. Yet this breeding was judiciously done, in accordance with an established standard rigidly adhered to. They are characterized as having a loose, thick skin, with few corrugations; little external gum, and thence comparatively light color; a fine, even fleece, with a brilliancy and style almost equalling the Saxon, and a strong likeness to the Spanish Escurial, but with a heavier fleece, and for this country, in the estimation of Mr. Randall, “a more valuable sheep than those of the Royal Cabana of Spain.”

The American Infantados were bred from Humphrey’s importation by Stephen Atwood, of Connecticut. They are of large size, short-necked, short-hipped, broad-shouldered, round, and symmetrical.  Their skins are loose and mellow, and of a deep rose color; the wool short, very yolky, with a black external gum. The wool is scarcely surpassed for quality, style, and evenness.  Dr. Spencer, of De Ruyter, New York, who has a fine flock of this family, averaged, in 1861, a fraction over seven pounds of wool from each sheep, the ewes weighing about ninety-five pounds, and averaging within a fraction of twenty-four inches in height.  Edwin Hammond, of Middlebury, Vermont, whose skill and patient effort have wrought much of the improvement in the “Atwood” sheep, says that he sheared two hundred sheep in 1861, and obtained an average of within an ounce or two of ten pounds. His best rams yielded about twenty-five pounds each. [A bit more about the Merinos of Vermont can be found here. -ASC]

"Twenty years ago they were heavy, low, broad sheep, full in the bosom and buttock, with strong bones, thick, short necks, and thick, coarse heads. The ewes had deep, pendulous, and sometimes plaited dewlaps, and folds of moderate size about the neck; the rams had both in a greater degree.”

Abruptly turning from short, fine wools, to the long, coarse staples, the improved Leicesters challenge the first consideration. They are thus described by Youatt:

   "The head should be hornless, long, small, tapering towards the muzzle, and projecting horizontally forward. The eyes prominent, but with a quiet expression. The ears thin, rather long, and directed backward. The neck full and broad at its base, where it proceeds from the chest, so that there is, with the slightest possible elevation, one continued horizontal line from the rump to the poll. The breast broad and round, and no uneven or angular formation where the shoulders join either neck or the back; particularly no rising of the withers or hollow behind the situation of these bones. The arm fleshy through its whole extent, and even down to the knee. The bones of the leg small, standing wide apart; no looseness of skin about them, and comparatively bare of wool. The chest and barrel at once deep and round, the ribs forming a considerable arch from the spine, so as in some cases, and especially when the animal is in good condition, to make the apparent width of the chest even greater than the depth. The barrel ribbed well home; no irregularity of line on the back or belly, but on the sides; the carcase very gradually diminishing in width toward the rump. The quarters long and full, and, as with the forelegs, the muscles extending down to the hock; the thighs also wide and full. The legs of a moderate length; the pelt also moderately thin, but soft and elastic, and covered with a good quantity of white wool.”

This variety, constituting the staple breed of the midland counties of England, and claimed by Wilson to be “more widely diffused through the kingdom than any of their congeners,” was formed, by persevering efforts in breeding for a special purpose of Robert Bakewell, of Dishley, in the county of Leicester.  Hence it has borne the names of Leicester, Dishley, and Bakewell, respectively.  He wished to establish a breed having a greater aptitude to fatten, and a consequent earlier maturity, without the prominent defects of existing breeds. Commencing, in 1755, with the old Leicesters, he sought as bucks individuals possessing the desired qualities without regard to families or relationship, and then pursued a course of in-and-in breeding, when it seemed to favor his grand object, until he succeeded in establishing a breed that was mature at two years instead of four, taking on fat very readily, extremely docile, with little offal, small in head and bone, weighing from eighteen to twenty pounds per quarter at fourteen months. This is understood to have been his general course, but the particulars of his system, so successful that no progress has been made since his days, is enveloped in secrecy. It is asserted, however, by some, that he did not hesitate to use fine specimens of the Lincolns and other breeds in the perfection of this variety.

It was a serious undertaking to change the large, heavy, slow-feeding, and coarse-grained Leicester into the improved variety of the present day. The Herefordshire, Heath, Cheviot, Black-faced, and other breeds, arrived at maturity at four years; the Leicester was scarcely earlier in its maturity, disproportionate, like these varieties, in offal, bone, and inferior qualities of flesh.  He seemed to care little for wool or for size, and, observing a greater tendency to take on fat and muscle in sheep of medium size, it is supposed that he adhered to this as one of his principles of selection. By such means a permanency was given to the desired characteristics of his flock, yet at the expense of the constitution, the hardiness, the fecundity, and the reputation as nurses of the original, in all of which respects they are inferior.

It was a successful effort on the part of Bakewell to form a sheep, suited to low lands and rich pasturage, that would produce the greatest amount of salable mutton from the least food in the shortest space of time—in other words, an ovine machine for converting turnips into coin with greatest rapidity.

The defects already indicated are very serious objections to the Leicesters in this country; so much so, that pure bred specimens are scarcely to be found here, those bearing the name having a portion of Cotswold, Cheviot, or other blood. English farmers are pursuing a similar course of improvement.  Leicester rams are now in great demand there, for crossing with other breeds.  In the bluegrass region of Kentucky and southern Ohio, where the Durham cattle flourish, they are regarded by many sheep-breeders with considerable favor.

Their mutton is too fat for American tastes; crossed with natives, though coarse-grained, it becomes very acceptable. The fat is laid very heavily upon the outside, and accumulates so rapidly that even in England, where fat mutton is popular, it is less palatable and valuable in the market after the animal has passed the age of fourteen months, It is acceptable to poor work people there, for use in soups, the excess of fat converting the largest quantity of vegetables into nutritious and palatable food. Its market value, however, is less by two fo two and a half cents per pound than South Down mutton. The different qualities of mutton sold in Leadenhall and Newgate markets in 1861 ranged in price from nine and a half to fifteen and a half cents per pound.

The Cotswolds, of the county of Gloucester, England, are of great antiquity, but have been greatly modified and improved within twenty years. They are sometimes called Gloucesters, sometimes New Oxfordshires. There has been a variety known by the latter name, made by crossing Leicester bucks upon Cotswold ewes; but the distinction between them and Cotswolds is not now recognized in England, the original stock being nearly extinct, and the new breed being known as improved Cotswolds. They are greatly superior to the Leicester in weight of wool, size, hardiness, vitality; are much more prolific, many of them habitually bearing twins, and excellent as nurses. Their fleeces are somewhat heavier than the Leicester, usually averaging seven or eight pounds. They are possessed of a good figure and have a portly gait. The rams sometimes attain the weight of 300 pounds, and one is known to have weighed 374 pounds. The wool is of moderate fineness, long, white, and strong.  They have a long, thin head, well set on, broad chest, well rounded barrel, and straight back. For rapidity of growth they vie with the Leicester, can scarcely be excelled for docility, and are unsurpassed in size and weight. Their mutton is coarse-grained and very fat, but better intermixed than the Leicester, which has three or four and sometimes five or six inches of fat upon the outside, as fed in England. They are now extensively used for crossing with other sheep, to obtain early lambs for market, both in this and in the mother country, and are rising rapidly in public estimation. For rich pastures, in regions where grain is abundant and cheap, they are invaluable, and especially to be preferred in view of the roughness and negligence characterizing the American system, or rather want of system, of sheep husbandry, to the pampered and delicate Leicesters. They have been in the country for thirty years or more, and are now largely imported from Canada.

This breed, if not quite so old as the chalky hills that afford the scant herbage upon which it thrives, dates back to the middle ages. To be sure, the original breed had little of the beauty and admirable points of the improved, though it possessed the germ of those qualities. The improvement of this breed has been progressing, slowly and continuously, since its commencement, by John Ellman, of Glynde, Sussex county, some eighty-five years ago. He pursued a course of pure breeding, with judgment, patience, zeal, and an intelligent liberality. He sought a form symmetrical and profitable; a flesh-and-fat producing habit, without inflicting injury upon constitution, health, fecundity, or matronly qualities; and he was eminently successful, through care and perseverance, exercised without deception, humbug, or egotism.

The originals, with light forequarters, narrow chests, long necks and limbs, were totally changed in these particulars. The South Down now has a small head without horns, a long gray or brown face of medium length, thin lips and under jaw, woolly ears and forehead, and a full and bright eye; a neck thin near the head, and widening into graceful symmetry as it joins the shoulders; a deep, wide breast, projecting forward; the shoulders not foo wide above, bowing outward from the top to the breast; the back flat from shoulder to tail; the ribs extending horizontally and backward, and then curving downward barrel- wise; the loin and rump broad; the Lips wide; the tail set high; the bell straight, like the back; the legs of medium length; the forelegs straight, standing far apart; the hock turning slightly outwards; the twist very full; the bones fine; the wool short, curled, and fine, and destitute of fibrous spires that give the felting properties of wools.

As prolific breeders, the Down families are unsurpassed, and scarcely equalled by any other breeds. Their English reputation in this respect is fully reasserted in this country. Notable instances, as evidence, could be given of every flock of this breed in the United States—among them, that of J.C.Taylor, of Holmdell, New Jersey, has repeatedly and uniformly given evidences of remarkable fecundity. Mr. Taylor has estimated the proportion of ewes bringing twins in the South Down flocks of the country at fifty per cent.

The sheep walks of Sussex, Hampshire, Shropshire, and other localities characterized by sandy hills of the chalk formation, interspersed with patches of arable soil, sometimes test the admirable stocking qualities of these sheep, and prove their endurance of short keep. This quality enables them to endure well the neglect of American farmers and thrive vigorously upon our hills and uplands, where a pampered Leicester would die. Their hardiness enables them to live through our severe storms and harsh winds, on the leeward side of a haystack, and amid a western farmer’s wilderness of wheat straw, out on the unprotected prairie. Of the mutton it is needless to write. It is everywhere regarded as an already attained ideal of perfection in that wholesome and nutritious meat. The flavor is delicate, the flesh juicy, the fat well intermixed, and its excess laid on internally.  It bears the highest price, the best quality bringing fifteen to sixteen cents, while inferior mutton is worth but nine and ten, and the best of other breeds only reach:twelve and thirteen cents as the topmost price. They are regarded as the best breed for use “as a working flock,” so prolific, so healthy in large flocks, so useful in folding for manure, and so easily fed upon elevated situations and the natural pastures of dry uplands. Above all, they are invaluable for crossing for early lambs, particularly upon the Cotswolds.

The South Downs are chiefly bred in England, in the counties of Sussex, Surry, Hants, Wilts, and Dorset. In this country they are introduced, to a considerable extent, throughout the most eastern and middle States, the most densely peopled sections of the west, and especially in the neighborhood of cities.

This variety of the Down family is really a cross breed, formed from the white-faced, horned Hampshire and Wiltshire sheep, coupled with South Down rams, which were selected of the darkest faces, till the white faces were changed to dark, and their horns literally bred off. In the meantime their want of compactness was remedied, the back broadened, the barrel rounded, the legs shortened, and the entire appearance of the animal wonderfully changed. The original hardiness of the native breed was retained with their disposition to- make early growth.

Thus was constituted, on the-established principles of cross-breeding, a breed slightly coarser, heavier, with longer wool but less symmetrical shape. The lambs are usually dropped early and fed for the markets, or kept until the following spring, when they usually weigh eighty to one hundred pounds, and command a good market. Like the South Downs, they are extensively used for crossing with other breeds. They are especially valuable for the northern portions of this country, on account of their peculiar hardiness. They are regarded as very a valuable breed, compensating fully for the want of the delicate head, &mall legs, and general symmetry of the Sussex or South Down, by their greater weight of carcase and wool, and somewhat earlier maturity.

These sheep are the result of several crosses, the foundation being the "short-legged” and square-framed "Clun-Forest,” with brown face and legs, and the Ryland, a white-faced, finer woolled sheep, approaching the Merino in quality of wool and general appcarance. The Hampshire and South Down blood was then brought into requisition, refining and elevating the common stock into the large and symmetrical Shropshire of the present day, a finely- formed sheep, with the head of the original "Forest,” and South Down deep chests, broad hips, and straight back, a tail get high, and a thick fleece of medium wool, weighing from five to seven pounds. They are remarkably free from liability to disease, and are favorably regarded for their fecundity, early maturity, weight of carcase and wool, and facility of fattening upon comparatively small quantity of food. The fleece, also, like the Lincoln and Romney Marsh, when they are well fed, is of that glossy staple so much sought at the present time for a certain class of lustrous goods.

This is the last of the Down cross-breeds to be noticed here, but by no means one of the least importance. They are, perhaps, in better repute in this country than cither of the others. They were produced by coupling Cotswold rams with Hampshire ewes, occasionally using the South Down to perfect the cross.

   “The Oxford Downs have gray faces and legs, not quite so dark as the South Downs; head fine, and well set; small hone, deep brisket, round hams; good, flat backs; hips wide, and tail set up high; belly straight; buttock square; legs rather short and fine, and twist full; the loin is very wide and deep, and a wide spread between the hind legs for the development of the udder. They are exceedingly gentle, quiet, and orderly, never jumping and not inclined to ramble; they are hearty feeders, and will thrive on anything given to them, and bear, better than any other large sheep, scanty pasturage. The ewes very commonly have twins, and suckle them both; the lambs thrive very fast, often reaching one hundred pounds in five months on nothing but milk and grass. A yearling ram from Mr. Fay’s flock gained fifteen pounds in three weeks, and & ram lamb weighing eighty-five pounds at five months, at six months weighed one hundred and five pounds, on nothing but grass. A yearling ram, seventeen months old, imported this season by Mr. Fay, weighed, just off the ship, two hundred and fifty pounds, and at twenty-one months three hundred pounds, and a five year old ram of this breed weighed this spring three hundred and sixty pounds. Mr. Fay's ewes weigh from one hundred and fifty to one hundred and eighty pounds."

This breed yields a very desirable quality of thick and heavy wool, weighing about seven pounds to the fleece, according to the experience of breeders in this country. Mr. Spooner considers it the result of the most successful attempt at cross-breeding ever made in England. He adduces, from certain experiments in feeding of Oxford Downs with Cotswolds, Leicesters, Hampshire Downs, and South Downs, the apparent fact that these cross-bred varieties surpassed the others in quality and productive value of their mutton, compared with the fleece and flesh of short wools.

In the discussion upon cross-breeds of the London "Farmers’ Club,” Mr. Hitchman, a breeder of Oxford Downs for twenty-five years, regarded them as the best rent-paying breed, and believed that no sheep will produce more or better mutton.  And Mr. Joseph Roberts, who has kept them twenty-seven years, adds: “I have no doubt Cotswold sheep can, in their locality, be brought to greater weight per sheep than any other breed save Lincolns; but I question whether they can be made to produce more money value, as a whole flock, than Oxfordshire Downs, allowing for the prolificacy of the latter; and I am of the opinion that the produce from the same number of ewes will exceed, in weight of flesh, any other breed.”

The effect of cross-breeding is acknowledged to be, in part, increase of size, fecundity, early maturity, and easy fattening. Hence they are sought by all engaged in raising early lambs for market—a business which is becoming one of the most popular and profitable branches of sheep husbandry, bringing quick returns, making the greatest possible weight for a given amount of feed, and securing the highest prices per pound, and "soft and valuable fleece.

There is now in England a universal prevalence of crosses, for the sake of early returns and good profits, the rams of pure breeds being used mainly to cross upon common and cross-bred varieties. The tendency is also strongly in that direction in this country.

In a report of the "Chester meeting,” in a number of the British Farmer’s Magazine,” it is said: “Cross-bred sheep are unusually prevailing, and why? because more wool and mutton are obtained than the pure breeds afford. The price of pure Down wool and mutton does not, to any extent, exceed that of cross-breeds. The art of breeding warrants this course; it is consequent from the improvement of both large and small breeds. Combined, they are the most profitable. We caution the breeders of pure bred animals against sheep of small size of any kind. They are getting behind the times in which we live.  Even the mountain sheep are growing large.”

A single experiment, conducted with great care and fairness, may be a guide to approximate accuracy of judgment, but should not be regarded as conclusive.  This certainly makes a fair showing for the cross-breeds.

Of these several breeds of sheep, the most prominent and popular in Europe, embracing nearly all practically known in this country, which shall be recommended as preferred breeds? In sheep fancying, »s in everything else, active- minded, practical men have strong preferences, not to say prejudices, and can never be expected to agree perfectly; nor is such agreement desirable, as it would prevent persistent effort in perfecting sheep, give to manufacturers wool unsuited to the diversity of fabrics, furnish mutton as little pleasing to the varied tastes of the people, narrow the limits of successful sheep husbandry, and dwarf the expanding intelligence and practical learning of the sheep-grower.

In the present condition of national affairs, when a demand for an immense increase in the production of wool is immediate and imperative, there is an irresistible tendency towards the growth of wool in preference to meat.  It is commendable ambition, an impulse both patriotic and profitable, to push the propagation of sheep solely for wool-producing; yet it may be, even now, that wool and mutton together, in our more populous districts, will yield a profit equalling that from the purely wool-bearing breeds. It is deemed proper, at least, to present considerations showing the increasing importance of the mutton varieties of sheep in this country, aside from the scarcity of wool.

There are circumstances which must give a prevailing direction, from time to time, to every species of progress or culture in husbandry. In early days, while a lamb from the flock was always acceptable food, the sheep was mainly propagated for its wool, which furnished, with skins, the entire clothing of mankind. In thinly-settled districts in modern times, especially in places remote from such markets as may exist, the fine woolled or Merino families are more profitable, the expense of carriage being light, with wool, in comparison with the cost of driving the animals great distances to poor markets. Such breeds are, therefore, found prevailing in our Territories, in the extreme northwest, the sparsely-settled plains of Texas, among the pine-wood pastures of the Atlantic and Gulf coast belt of sandy soils, through the mountain ranges of Virginia, the Carolinas, Northern Georgia, Tennessee, and the hills of Southeastern Kentucky. Tn Vermont they prevailed, in former years, from inland position; at present from an additional advantage—the profit of furnishing the best blood of American Merinos to be found in the country (attained by a long and successful course of breeding) for the improvement of fine-woolled flocks in the several States and Territories. Fancy prices are yielding tempting returns, and it is not presumable, and perhaps not desirable, that such breeders as Edwin Hammond, John T. Rich, W. W. C. Wright, Henry Lane, and others, should be willing speedily to desist from their useful and profitable enterprises with this valuable breed; but the country is becoming more densely populated, and the taste for good mutton is growing upon the public. In ten years the increase of population has been thirty-five per cent.; in the same time the value of slaughtered animals had increased from $111,703,142 to $212,871,653—a gain of ninety per cent., a heavy proportion of the increase being in mutton. Hence a growing popularity of mutton breeds has naturally given them the preference in Massachusetts and southern portions of New England, with a strong tendency in that direction in the middle States and the more populous portions of the west. In fact, wherever railroads are numerous, the same result may be confidently expected.¹

It is a curious fact, illustrative of the wonderful increase in mutton eating, that at the famous Brighton market, in the neighborhood of Boston, on the day before Christmas, in 1839, two men held the entire stock, consisting of only 400 sheep; and yet that monopoly at such a time could not raise the sluggish market more than a half cent per pound. In 1859, in the same market, on the day before Christmas, 5,400 sheep were sold.

For is this very strange. It was common, and is yet, in remote or Merino districts, for people to indicate an unconquerable aversion to mutton. It is, indeed, the poorest meat in the world; it is also the best. A poor, thin, lean sheep, of the native and Merino breeds—an animal that had outlived its many years, of usefulness as a wool-bearer—was sometimes cut down by the relentless knife as a cumberer of the pasture ground, and consigned to the pot in the vain and hopeless effort of macerating its toughened fibres sufficiently to make its mastication a physical possibility. Alas! how many have suffered in such futile undertaking, and learned to loathe the very name of mutton, and to abominate its very smell.

Henry S. Randall, the distinguished advocate of fine wools, and doubtless the best writer upon sheep husbandry in this country, in pleading for the recognition of Merino mutton, says: “Though the scarcity and value of full- blood Merinos have prevented many of them from appearing in our markets, the grades have always been favorites witn the butcher and consumer.”  It is a graceful acknowledgment of the magical improvement caused by the infusion of the blood of mutton breeds. He sums up his argument in their favor, and adds: “I shall nowhere, however, be understood to advance the idea that it would be advisable, in the mutton districts proper, when access to a good, market is quick and cheap, to substitute the Merino for the best English mutton varieties.”

“Roast beef” and an English dinner were formerly considered almost synonymous terms; but the statistics of English meat markets, and the statements of British authors, show conclusively that mutton, rather than beef, is the favorite food of the British nation.

Robert Herbert, in a survey of the market for 1860, reported that, with regard to the production and consumption of mutton, the former had not kept pace with the demand, which had continued remarkably healthy.

In 1860 the average price of prime beef was 16½ cents; of prime mutton, 18 cents; the best old Downs reached the figure of 19 cents.

During a period of fifteen years, including the last year, the average price of beef in England has been about 11¼ cents, while mutton has averaged 12¾ cents, the latter having made the greater advance during the period. Thus the greater consumption of mutton is not owing to its cheapness. In this country, too, the price of prime mutton has advanced rapidly. “In the Albany market, for several years, mutton has sold from one to two cents higher than beef. In Boston and in New York good mutton also sells higher than beef. Inferior qualities sell low, in the west particularly. There is a constant upward tendency in price here, as in other countries, which a much more abundant supply will scarcely interfere with in many years to come. Not only is its consumption favored by changing tastes, but by economic considerations; while it is more palatable and nutritious than any other animal food, it wastes materially less in cooking. The report on sheep husbandry, made to the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture in 1860, says on this point: “English chemists and philosophers, by a series of careful experiments, find that 100 pounds of beef, in boiling, lose 26½ pounds; in roasting, 32 pounds; and in baking, 30 pounds, by evaporation and loss of soluble matter, juices, water, and fat. Mutton lost, by boiling, 21 pounds; and by roasting, 24 pounds; or, in another form of statement, a leg of mutton costing, raw, 15 cents, would cost, boiled and prepared for the table, 18½ cents dper pound; boiled fresh beef would, at the same price, cost 19¼ cents per pound; sirloin of raw beef, at 16½ cents, costs, roasted, 24 cents, while a leg of mutton at 15 cents would cost, roasted, only 22 cents.’

The price of prime lamb is still higher than mutton, in all markets. The production of early lambs is, perhaps, the most profitable branch of sheep husbandry. And here the great superiority of the mutton breeds is apparent to all.  With South Downs and their crosses more flesh can be made, a higher price secured, a more valuable fleece obtained, and an earlier return of the investment realized, in this branch of the business, than in the slow-going business of wool-growing merely. Nor need there be a fear of glutting the market. Vermont has eight acres of territory for each sheep; Ohio about the same ratio; New York has 11 acres; while the entire territory of the United States could be apportioned into lots of an eighth of a section, or eighty acres to each sheep.

France has a sheep for every four and a half acres of territory, while Great Britain has one nearly twice as large for every two and a quarter acres, and England proper almost as many sheep as acres; and yet the price of mutton is greater there than in any prominent market in the world. An increasing supply in our markets, with increasing excellence in quality, might occasion a rise, instead of a decline, in price.

The decrease of short wool in 28 years was 17,476,800 pounds. The increase of long wool during the same time was 31,692,720 pounds. The average weight of short fleeces was 3.1 pounds; of long, 7.6 pounds, in 1800, according to these tables.

The price of labor in this country is an argument, appreciated by every farmer, in favor of mutton sheep. It is stated by the best authority extant on fine wool stock, that it now costs about two dollars per head annually to keep Merino sheep. In South America it costs scarcely a tithe of that sum to produce a fleece; in South Africa wool-growing costs little in labor and pasture, and in Australia the business has vied with the most successful gold-mining in profit, being conducted on a magnificent scale upon the crown lands, with little more of outlay than the necessary care bestowed by a shepherd would require.  And even there the question of mutton against wool has been raised. %ince the rapid influx of population, according to an English authority, the flocks of New South Wales and Victoria, numbering 15,302,000 in 1855, were reduced to 12,348,022 in 1858, mainly through the instrumentality of butchers.

And the governor general of New South Wales now suggests that "it is desirable to change the kind of sheep, substituting, as in England, an animal with coarse fleece and heavier carcase for the fine-woolled varieties.”

India produces eighteen to twenty millions of pounds, and Mr. Wray has estimated its wool-producing capacity at two hundred millions.

The remote regions, it is conceded, are the places from which to obtain fine wools. Countries in which land is valuable and labor high cannot afford to grow wool alone, though the production of mutton and wool combined may still prove a profitable branch of industry. Is this country, with all its broad acres, merely a pastoral region, where high culture may not bless the soil, nor well-paid labor yield a reasonable return? If land may not command a rental of twenty dollars per acre, or more, as in England, is it not freely sold at $100 and $150 per acre in certain localities in New York and Pennsylvania, and at $50 and $75 in Illinois and Ohio and Kentucky? Nowhere are higher wages paid to farm laborers than here; nowhere is the spirit of agricultural improvement more manifestly active; nowhere is the ratio of increase in population so high. Are not these the conditions of a mutton-producing sheep husbandry? Or must we assimilate to the rural industry of Africa and South America, rather than take a rank upon an equality with England, with a determination to exceed her in the skill and profit of our agriculture?

But there is a relative diminution in the demand for fine wools, which affects the comparative profit of the two systems, and seems to stimulate the production of mutton. The following extracts from the recent work of Mr. Randall the enthusiastic champion of the Merinos, are significant acknowledgments upon this point.

   “In the American market there is a much larger demand for medium than fine wools, and the former commands much the best price in proportion to its cost of production. It is to be hoped, however, that the demand for fine wools will increase.”
   “American producers of very fine wool have ever fed an expectation, but never obtained the fruition of their hopes.”

“I am strongly impressed with the. opinion that the production of mutton has been too much disregarded as a concomitant of the production of wool. Near large meat markets mutton is the prime consideration and wool but the accessory; remote from such markets the converse of the proposition is true.”

Upon this theory, mutton is becoming, year by year, a more important consideration in all the States cast of the Mississippi river, for space has been annihilated, and the prairies set down by the largest markets, through the magical agency of railroads, which have been extended from 8,588 miles in 1850 to 30,598 in 1860, an increase of more than 22,000 miles, of which more than 17,000 were in the west and south.

In saying this, it is not intended to intimate that Merinos may not; be profitably kept, even in preference to mutton breeds, in certain mountainous localities, difficult of access, or remote from railroads; within the territory east of the Mississippi, such as the mountainous regions in Southern Kentucky and Tennessee, some portions of the Alleghany range, and perhaps the high pastures of the Green Mountains. But sheep husbandry, as a whole, in the populous portions of the States, will undoubtedly tend to the production of flesh and fleece in preference to fleece alone.

A constant lessening of the difference in price: between fine and long wools is another admonition of the change going on in the direction of the latter.

In 1800 the French Merinos, or royal Rambouillet flock, produced a wool that sold at thirty-eight cents, while the common coarse wool was. worth ten or eleven; finer and better wools have borne a still higher price since; but for thirty years past, as will be shown by the statistics of all the wool markets of the world, and very conclusively under another heading, the "Fluctuation of wool values,” the tendency has been to depreciation in price of Merino wool, and advance in that of coarse wools. Even the low, coarse, dirty wools of South America and Mexico, have doubled in value in twenty years, The best American families; the finest type of the Merinos, have been improved in size and compactness, securing larger and coarser fleeces, selling at a less price; on the contrary, mutton breeds, with higher feeding, give more lustrous and softer fleeces than in former years, selling at prices almost as high as the fine wools.  There is no prospect in the future than the former disparity in prices of wool will ever again exist.

There is a quiet, constant setting in of the tide of popular preference for goods made from long or combing wools, such as “moreens,” “damasks,” "cobourgs,” “orleans,” “melton,” and a great variety of new and popular cloths, including even what are known as “merinos,”—worsted goods, made of wool staple, first combed, to arrange the fibres parallel to each other, and then spun into a small coarse thread.

Almost all of the English wool is made into worsted goods. The old Lincoln sheep, with very long wool, makes a fabric of lustrous appearance, and the Romney Marsh wool has such silkiness and lustre that it is nearly all sent to France for manufacture into beautiful imitations of alpaca and mohair.

Leicester wool is finer, but not so lustrous as the old Lincoln, and is used for worsteds.

Cotswold is very long stapled, of a very harsh: character; a combing wool, but not suitable for lustrous goods. It sells at about the same price as Leicester.

The Downs are of short staple, but longer than formerly, and rank in this country as middle wools. The shorter staples are made into flannels and light woollen goods; the longer are used extensively for combing purposes.

The Hampshire Downs have a wool of longer staple than the South Down, of quite uniform quality, somewhat coarser than that of their Sussex relations.

  The Shropshires have a wool of similar grade, perhaps a little finer and more lustrous.

The Oxford Downs, like the other cross-breeds, have a wool of longer staple than the South Down, of quite uniform quality, about the game value, and useful for worsted manufactures.

The various families of Merinos, producing fine felting wools, valuable for broadcloths, are almost the only breeds bearing wool of this character.  Yet such is the perfection of machinery nowadays, that former difficulties in manufacturing have vanished, and almost every description of goods is made from the different varieties and qualities of improved long wools.

Mr. George William Bond, who furnished the above table of the "Report of the Boston Board of Trade,” in January, 1862, says there are about five hundred sets of cards in the remainder of the free States; and that, so far as he knows, there are no broadcloths made in the United States, except such as are made for the army and navy, though some were made in Massachusetts prior to 1846.

It will be seen that, notwithstanding all our finest cloths are imported, the imports of fine piece goods, broadcloths, and cassimeres, including some made of cotton, in part, amount to but 33 per cent. of the importation of woollens.

These figures show with great clearness the remarkable disparity between the consumption of fine wools and of the coarser grades. They also exhibit this difference as constantly widening. It is frequently said that “the world is moving;” the masses are better able and more inclined to seek a more valuable material for clothing; the few rich cease to use alone the finer fabrics, while the many poor are swelling the demand for woollens, yet using mainly the coarser grades of wool, and making wider and wider the disproportion between the consumption of the fine and the long wools. This disproportion will continue to increase.

Nor is this all. The rich and luxurious are giving decided preference, especially in dress goods for ladies, to those of silky lustre, as well as silken softness. This silkiness does uot depend on fineness of fibre, but is actually found in perfection only in certain long-woolled breeds. It is a valuable quality, and occasions a difference in value of 25 per cent. over wools of equal fineness, and contributes to the popularity and profit of long-wool growing.

These considerations, all tending in one direction, induce the American farmer to seek a profit in mutton and wool rather than in wool alone; show him that the conditions of American husbandry in price of lands, cost of labor, advance in scientific culture, and proximity to large and growing mutton markets, assimilate more and more to those under which English flock-masters now labor; prove that the great want of the world for clothing purposes is strong, serviceable, long-fibred, combing wool, and a great deal of it, for the toiling masses of the earth and the middle classes of society; exhibit a growing tendency, as the world grows more enlightened and refined, towards the largely-increased consumption of mutton as an article of food; and impel the sheep-growers of the country to renewed exertions for the improvement of their flocks and the wider dissemination of the best mutton breeds. It is a conclusion in perfect accord with our national impatience at the slow growth and late development of any enterprise, and our desire for speedy returns of money invested, which is at once natural and necessary in view of our prevalent high rates of interest, and the immensity of our resources to be developed.

The future will show, at no distant day, in a light obvious to all, the correctness of these calculations.

The statistics of sheep and wool, like other results of the census, are defective necessarily, and doubtless more incorrect than they should be by reason of carelessness in making returns.  Still, a proximate accuracy is aimed at.

In 1850 the census returned 21,723,220 sheep; in 1860, 22,163,105—increase in ten years, 439,885; an increase of two per cent.^[2] In addition to this number, there were returned by assistant marshals, not included in the regular returns, because not owned by farmers, 1,505,810, making the aggregate 23,668,915.

As compared with the increase of sheep, there has been a proportionally larger increase of wool, indicating a greater weight of fleece. The clip of 1850 was 52,516,959 pounds; that of 1860, 60,511,343 pounds—an increase of 15.2 per cent. This improvement is only a continuation of former progress, which has by no means reached its highest limit.

In 1840, from 19,311,374 sheep were sheared 35,802,114 pounds of wool equal to 1.84 pounds per head.

In 1850, while sheep had increased 12 per cent. in number, the wool crop had augmented 46 per cent., fleeces averaging about 2.42 pounds. The increase from 1850 to 1860 has been respectable, fleeces averaging 2.73 pounds.

Daniel Needham, of Hartford, Vermont, says there was not a buck in that State that could shear 12 pounds in 1840, while there are those now that yield 20 to 25 pounds, of which 60 per cent. is clean wool.

Ohio, which produces the largest amount of wool of any of the States, with 3,942,929 sheep, in 1850, had a wool clip of 10,196,371 pounds, the fleeces averaging 2.58 pounds. In 1860, with 879,042 less sheep, the wool product was greater than in 1850, (10,648,161 pounds,) averaging 3.47 pounds per fleece, or 34.4 per cent. increase in ten years.

In point of numbers, and, in some instances, in aggregate amount of wool, the older States exhibited a decline in sheep husbandry. This decline has been going on for many years in New England, and amounted to 45 per cent. between 1840 and 1850, and 20.4 per cent. in the last ten years. From 2,213,287, in 1850, the decrease has been 496,352.

In the four middle States there has been a diminution of 1,060,109 from 5,463,589, in 1850, or 19.4 per cent.

In the ten southern (Atlantic and Gulf) States there was an increase of 352,709, or 9.1 per cent. from 3,840,124 in 1850. Texas alone gives an increase of 683,088, without which there would have been a loss almost as heavy as the actual improvement. In the fourteen remaining (western) States, in which were 9,781,241 sheep, in 1850, there has been an increase of 1,149,664, or 11.75 per cent.

Making a comparison between the twenty-four loyal and the eleven “seceded States,” the showing of the weight of fleeces is conspicuous, the difference being doubtless due in part to climate, in part to careless sheep husbandry.  In the former, 16,263,718 sheep produced 50,183,626 pounds of wool, averaging 3.08 pounds each; in the latter, 5,013,059 gave 9,748,702 pounds, or 1.94 pounds per fleece.  Virginia, with as favorable natural conditions for sheep husbandry as any other locality, averages 2.40 pounds. Tennessee averages 1.81; Texas, 1.91 pounds.

The following tables exhibit the relative increase or diminution, either in sheep or wool, and the percentage of each in the several States, showing a decrease in sheep in twenty-one States, and an increase in thirteen, with an increase in wool in twenty-one States, and a decrease in twelve, Kansas reporting none in 1850.

A comparison of wool imports, one year with another, during the whole period of our manufacturing history, will show a remarkable series of ups and downs suffered, rather than enjoyed, by both manufacturer and wool-grower.  When prices have ruled high, sheep-breeding and wool-growing have been stimulated to great activity; then, after a very short period of prosperity, factories have stopped, prices sunk, and farmers have become discouraged, killing their flocks remorselessly for mutton, if fat; for tallow and pelts, if poor. One of the causes of these fluctuations has been the constant tinkering with the tariff by politicians—a cause which can scarcely operate in the future under a necessarily high revenue system. Other causes have existed, leading to diversion of capital and labor to other branches of husbandry, as such in turn has realized its term of inflation. With wheat, for instance, at one period given away at thirty-seven cents, rising to one dollar, and at times sold at two dollars, it is not strange that the high price should draw all husbandry towards the fatal vortex of exclusive wheat-growing.  So with other pursuits of agriculture.

In 1850, when the price was ruinously low, the number began to diminish; the following year saw little improvement, and the number still fell off; in 1852 the number was still lower, but the minimum was reached, for prices began to appreciate, being double the previous valuation; and in 1853 so patent was the stimulus of enhanced prices that more than a million was added to the previous figure, and almost an equal addition the following year, when a retrograde again commenced. Increased weight and superior quality had something to do with the improvement in prices, particularly during the fluctuations of later years.

The price of wool was very low in 1800, and for a few subsequent years, full-blood Merino was worth about one dollar per pound in 1808, and continued high, some of it selling at $2.50 per pound, until the close of the war, when cheap woollens came in, manufacturing being in a primitive state, and prices low until 1824.

The following table, exhibiting the prices of wool in Boston during the period of most substantial progress in manufacturing in this country since ¥824, is made from data furnished by George Livermore, esq., an eminent wool merchant of Boston, in his statement of quarterly average prices prepared for “Randall’s Fine Wool Husbandry:

It has been shown that more of foreign than of home-grown wool is consumed at present in the United States. It needs but a glance at wool growing and wool manufacturing during the last generation, its extended use in ever-multiplying fabrics of clothing and carpeting, its undiminished demand and appreciated price, to prove that as population increases and civilization advances, the consumption will be largely increased, and the markets of the world long remain unglutted.

In 1860 there were consumed in woollen goods, from our own and foreign looms, at a fair estimate, four pounds of wool to each individual, or 125,000,000 pounds in round numbers. What will be the requirement thirty years hence?  In 1860 the population was nearly thirty-two millions. The increase has been quite uniformly about three per cent. per annum, doubling once in twenty-three years. Say that it doubles in thirty years at about two and a half per cent.; in 1890 the population will be 64,000,000, requiring 256,000,000 pounds of wool. Allowing the average weight of the fleece to increase in that time from 2.73 to 4 pounds per fleece by the dissemination of mutton breeds and improved American Merinos, there would be required 64,000,000 fleeces yearly, or 85,333,333, if the fleece should increase only to three pounds, to supply the home demand, before we could calculate upon a single ounce for exportation.

Not only should our home demand be supplied, but there should be a serious attempt to compete eventually for the supply of foreign markets. The product has fallen off in France, in Prussia, in Germany, and in Spain, while it has doubtless reached its highest point in England, in Portugal, in Italy, and other wool-producing countries. In Australia, though the lands nearest the coast, and supposed to be the best, are mostly taken up, and the prices of wild lands and of labor are higher even than in the United States, there are still sheepwalks in the interior valuable despite the drawback of excessive droughts; and the supply may yet be increased.

South America can supply all wools, and has the immense pastures and other conditions necessary for successful fine wool-growing, lacking only the skill and care in management.

The experiment of exportation has already been made, and must in the future prove successful, particularly in fine and in the better class of combing wools. It is claimed by Vermont sheep-breeders, who have travelled over Europe in search of perfection, that they have the best style of Merinos in the world, not excepting Spain.

It will be seen that the same fluctuations observed in wool prices have existed in the importations of woollens, affected, no doubt, by periodical inflations and depressions of the national finances, as well as by other causes.  The rapid increase is a striking fact, so far exceeding the increase of population.

The treasury schedules, under the operation of the tariff of 1857, did not include the number of pounds. Hence they are not given; nor is the average price per pound.

In connexion with this tabular statement, a comparative view of English imports is interesting. The imports of wool into England increase from 1,829,772 pounds in 1771, and 10,914,137 pounds in 1810, at an irregular ratio of advance, very slow until after 1820, rising above 40,000,000 in 1825, thence fluctuating slightly up to 1840. The increase since 1840 has been enormous, rising to 133,000,000 pounds in 1859, of which the British colonial possessions furnished 82,000,000. The home product, from 30,000,000 of sheep, was estimated at 120,000,000 pounds, which, added to the importation, gives 253,000,000 pounds. Compared with the aggregate for 1840, viz: home product, 100,000,000 importation, 46,224,784; total, 146,224,784, an increase of 106,776,216 pounds is shown. Of this, 28,000,000 pounds were exported to France, the United States, and other countries.

Some of the British colonies made an astonishing increase in twenty years.  In Australia, from 13,000,000 to 54,000,000; in south Africa, from 1,000,000 to 14,000,000; in the East Indies, from 4,000,000 to 14,000,000.

During this period of rapid advance the price of British wool underwent no diminution, but continued to render sheep husbandry one of the most profitable branches of English industry.

The following statement exhibits the wool exports of the principal wool-producing countries in the world. It should be remembered, however, with regard to England, that the imports are many fold more than the exports.

The present wool consumption of this country is enormously large. Since 1860, during the continuance of the war of the rebellion, a great augmentation of the wool demand has attended the fitting out of more than a million of armed men, whose clothing is almost exclusively of wool³ And when the war is over, men who have become accustomed to flannels and woollen garments in the field will from choice, if not from necessity, continue their use in the workshop and on the farm.

In 1860, 364,036,123 pounds of cotton were manufactured, costing (raw material) $55,994,735. During the past year especially, a large percentage of this manufacture has been lost to the industry of the country and necessities of the people. King Cotton has been dethroned, and his sudden toppling from his place of pride and power will not only destroy his political prestige, but dim materially the lustre of his commercial fame, and detract from his industrial importance. Other textile products will be patronized, experimented upon, and their use rendered fashionable. Wool, flax, Chinese silk, jute, and other textiles, will evidently encroach heavily upon the domain of cotton. This period, then, would seem to be peculiarly auspicious for enlarged operations in wool-growing. For many years it will be impossible, under any circumstances, to meet the great and constantly growing demand.

Not alone the casualties of textile production, and the accident of a military demand, but the peculiar sanitary propriety of the increased use of wool will tend fo enhance the future consumption. Woollen is peculiarly the clothing of this climate, which is variable and changeable, subject to extremes of heat and cold, which can only be guarded against by changes of clothing to meet the ever-varying temperature, or by a constant use of woollens of different textures. Perhaps the latter course is the more healthful, economical, and comfortable. So excellent a non-conductor of heat is wool, that the uniform temperature of the body is less disturbed by atmospheric changes in the wearing of woollen clothing than in the use of any other material. The concurrent testimony of army surgeons upon this subject is emphatic and entirely conclusive.

   “Put it on at once; winter and summer nothing better can be worn next the skin than a. loose red woollen shirt; ‘loose,’ for it has room to move on the skin, thus causing a titillation which draws the blood to the surface and keeps it there; and, when that is the case, no- one can take cold; 'red,' for white flannel fulls up, mats together, and becomes tight, stiff, heavy, and impervious. Cotton-wool merely absorbs the moisture from the surface, while woollen flannel conveys it from the skin and deposits it in drops on the outside of the shirt, from which the ordinary cotton shirt absorbs it, and by its nearer exposure to the air it is soon dried without injury to the body.  Having these properties, red woollen flannel is worn- by sailors even in the midsummer of the warmest countries. Wear a thinner material in summer.”

   Even in the hottest weather the entire clothing of the soldier should be woollen; this item is of immeasurable importance, and cannot be too urgently commended to the soldier’s attention. In midsummer cotton drawers would be better; but as that involves a useless care of them for a greater part of the year, and as it is settled policy in war to be encumbered with as little baggage as possible, it may be as well to have all the clothing of woollen.
   "Just as Lord Nelson’s ship was leaving England he discovered that the flannel shirts of the men were six inches shorter than they ought to have been, and refused to go until the proper kind was furnished. He was ridiculed and called "an old granny.” The result was that, while the rest of the fleet was decimated, he did not lose a single man! and ‘his ship- in efficiency was as good as any TWO others!’
   “The common observation of all nations leads them to give their sailors woollen flannel shirts for all seasons and for all latitudes, as the best equalizer of the heat of the body.”

   "Because it is warmer; it conveys heat away from the body less rapidly; does it so slowly that it is called a non-conductor; it feels less cold when we touch it to the skin than silk or cotton.
   “If the three are wetted the flannel feels less cold at the first touch, and gets warm sooner than silk or cotton, and does not cling to the skin, when damp, as much as they do. We know what a shock of coldness is imparted to the skin when, after exercise and perspiration, a linen shirt worn next the skin is brought in contact, by a change of position, with a part of the skin which it did not touch a moment before, often sending a shivering chill through the whole system.
“Another reason why woollen flannel is better is, that while cotton and silk absorb the perspiration, and are equally saturated with it, a woollen garment conveys the moisture to the outside, where the microscope, or a very good eye, will see the water standing in innumerable drops. This is shown any hour by covering a profusely sweating horse with a blanket, and letting him stand still.  In a short time the hair and inner surface of the blanket will be dry, while the moisture will be left on the outside.”

   "Diseases of the chest are early contracted by exposure to the cold without sufficient clothing. The greater port:on of the children, from one to fifteen months old, who die in winter, are killed by the cold, or diseases resulting from cold.
   “The use of woollen clothing in winter is necessary for all, at least about the upper parts of the body; and, even during summer, the man who from his profession is compelled to work in damp places, and exposed to drafts, should not wear light clothes, or divest himself of them when in a state of perspiration.
   “Woollen stockings tend to a very considerable afflux of blood towards the calves of the leg, so that in particular conditions of health their use should at least not be desired; they should be rejected during youth and manhood, but they are of highly valuable service in old age, because then the blood should be checked in its pressure towards the head, and old people generally can scarcely dress themselves too warmly.
   “Woollen socks should everywhere be adopted, for cold feet are almost always the cause of catching cold, (catarth,) and an obstinate cough is often known to cease from the exclusive use of this sort of clothing, so essentially healthy.
   “In regard to health, there is generally no risk in wearing warm clothes; on the contrary, they result in great advantage.”

Wool is peculiar, among all material used for clothing purposes, as an absorbent of the perspiration, or thrown-off impurities of the body, which are carried to the outside, and thence evaporated. Cotton and other textile materials (good conductors of heat) allow a rapid evaporation directly from the surface of the body, carrying off its latent heat, while leaving impurities upon the skin, chilling the surface, closing the pores, throwing effete matters upon lungs or bowels, or other interior functions, and thus causing all manner of diseases. But wool is the best non-conductor. In a cold, dry climate, the wool becoming wet on the outside, and frozen, acts as a coat of mail, with the further protection of a warm inside lining. It is said that the Scotch highlanders were formerly accustomed, when exposed in cold nights, to wet their plaids before lying down to sleep, and hold them from their bodies till frozen stiff, when they become impervious to cold.

The increasing popularity of woollen goods, shown in the rapidly multiplying styles of fabrics, such as fancy-colored shirtings, light goods of soft wool for summer pantaloons, a variety of long wool cloths for coats and blouses, and heavier cloths of similar textures for over-coats, is strong testimony to the growing appreciation of the superior healthfulness, beauty, and economy of woollens.

   "In England, where the children go half naked; where the servants do their work in the morning with their arms naked up to their shoulders, and where the women are always lightly clothed, pulmonary consumption exist in enormous proportion. In London one-fourth of the deaths result from phthisis.”

The same authority says that this disease has only prevailed in France since the women wore their hair a al Titus, their arms naked, and bosom in a great degree uncovered.

It would be a difficult task to describe the present styles of woollen goods, and combinations of silk and wool, and other mixed woollen fabrics, made for women’s wear. It is said by merchants and manufacturers that twice the quantity of woollen goods used ten years ago is now worn by ladies. In the summer, gossamer webs of berage and berage de laines are worn, and found to be cooler and more comfortable during the heat of summer, and under the exhaustion of exercise, than cotton goods.  Flannels are multiplying rapidly— plain, figured, and striped, and increasing in beauty and softness. Hosiery, formerly entirely blacks is now made into a multiplicity of styles and a variety of colors, intended to please the eye, as well as to promote the comfort of the wearer. Balmorals, the gift of the matronly queen, Victoria, show wondrous ingenuity in many hued shades of beauty, and save the delicate texture of dress from the contamination of the sidewalk, without exposure of garments of ghostly hue, stainless to be sure, but cold and colorless. Then there are the de baizes in great variety, mixed goods, but cheap and serviceable; the mousseline de laines of American manufacture, rich enough for daughters of princes; lustres of silk and wool; poplins of similar material, but heavier and dearer; Coburgs and other Merinos in rich variety; and cloaking cloths, light, soft, and fine, of long wools; or else heavy and coarse, with a soft fur-like nap of extreme length; or perhaps a close-textured, solid, fine fabric of the best Merino.  These latter goods are of every imaginable style, the prevailing tendency being to soft, lustrous, long-woolled goods.

As civilization and education advance, and people learn the principles of hygiene in the school of experience, it might be expected that such a clothing reform would be inaugurated. Hence, with the thick soles and high boots, and other improvements, in place of various barbarisms of female dress, have come in these healthful and beautiful fabrics, intended for the clothing of ladies; and health and fashion have for once joined hand in hand. What has thus been joined let no Parisian milliner recklessly and profanely put asunder! In such an era shall man be arrayed in sheep’s clothing, and the prophecy of the poet of a hundred years ago will be fulfilled:

While changing imposts, new and absorbing pursuits in agriculture, the opening up of new farms, the development of one branch or another of our enormous resources, have continuously, as in turn, withdrawn attention from sheep farming, there has been another great drawback to the business. The statistics of Ohio for 1858 show a loss of $109,661 in sheep killed, and $37,097 in sheep injured by dogs; aggregate of $146,758. Other years have shown lighter losses. Last year the loss was heavy again.

Taking the average for Ohio, and calculating upon the census returns of 1860, the entire loss to the United States would be nearly $1,000,000 per annum. This loss, having had its influence in withdrawing capital from wool-growing, is exciting attention among farmers and agricultural periodicals, causing discussion in legislative halls, and eliciting practical acumen and legal lore in drafting dog laws.

Laws should be passed to.insure practically the extermination of worthless curs. At present it is a race between sheep and dogs, with a fair prospect, in Rhode Island at least, where the dogs are a little ahead, that the curs will exterminate the sheep. New York has a dog law; so has Massachusetts; and Ohio and other States have legislated upon the subject. In each case some good has resulted, but the cure is not radical. If some red republican should arise with decapitation for his war cry, and the guillotine for his instrument, and rule for a while as a dictator of our sheepwalks, long enough to show the results of his dynasty, no whining poodle would ever be able again “to pull the wool over the eyes” of commiserating farmers. It is to be hoped that more stringent laws, such as will be practical and efficient, will speedily be enacted and enforced in all the States, and thus obviate the almost scandalous acknowledgment, such as is made in the Ohio Agricultural Report, that in twenty-two counties in Ohio, having 811,863 sheep in 1846, there were but 505,226 in 1856—a decrease of more than 300,000, due entirely to the ravages of dogs and consequent discouragement. The injury by dogs in that State will be seen by the following statement:

In the mean time, might not the injury be avoided, in all large flocks at least, by the use of a trained shepherd dog?  Many such a dog is daily worth more than the services of a stout boy; on the larger sheep farms in England and Scotland such service of dogs is estimated at $100 each. At $10 for every flock of a hundred or more in this country, the benefit would be represented by a large figure. The principal breeds are the Spanish sheep dog, similar to the Alpine or Bernardine spaniel; the Mexican, probably a descendant of the Spanish; the English drover’s dog, and the Scotch colley. Of the latter, Buffon says that he is the true dog of nature, the model of the species; that “he reigns at the head of his flock, and makes himself better understood than the voice of the shepherd. Safety, order, and discipline, are the fruits of his vigilance,” and that “he conducts them with an admirable intelligence, which is a part and portion of himself; that his sagacity astonishes, at the same time it gives repose to his master.”

It is suggested that the employment of shepherds for the care of large flocks would subserve the interest of the sheep-growers and add to the profits of their business. The care of the sick, attention to young lambs, protection against dogs or wolves, and a constant watchfulness in a score of ways, may prevent loss, and enhance the profits of the owner, on the prairies and the far western plains, (such of the latter as furnish any grasses whatever,) as well as in mountain pastures all over the country—in all places, in fact, where fences are expensive and unusual dangers environ the business. In South America and Mexico, in Scotland, and other parts of Europe, a shepherd is found necessary; in Texas shepherds have been employed to advantage. It is usual to place a flock of five or six hundred in the care of one shepherd and his dogs. In Australia the shepherds and stockmen in charge of flocks and herds number about half as many as the former, and the business is there found so profitable that the proprietors, who are squatters on the crown lands, are enabled to live, like princes in England, on their income.

One of the strongest inducements to more extensive sheep husbandry is found in the growing necessity for improvement in pastures. No soil, however fertile, can long sustain the drain of heavy cropping, when these crops are carried from the soil and no equivalent returned.  We may assert as we please and boast of inexhaustible fertility; but our wheat-fields, yielding half the product of English- soil, give the lie to our pretensions; and those English farmers, paying rentals equal to the fee-simple of western farms, say they could not pay their rent, and certainly could realize no profits, but for their sheep. Owners of farms on the Southdowns say they could not cultivate them but for sheep. Intelligent farmers in this country will testify to the manurial value of sheep. Mr. Bushnell, of Sheffield, Massachusetts, acknowledges an increase of fifty per cent. in the value of his lands during a period of thirty years engaged in sheep husbandry.

Lawns are kept green if repeatedly shaven. The incisors of the sheep are closer cutters than those of the ox. When the pasture fails for the ox, the sheep can get a good bite, and still thrive.  Close grazing cuts the short suckers, and calls forth new ones, succulent, vigorous, and numerous, making a thick carpet of green, and better protecting the roots against drought. Too close feeding, however, may injure the pasture; besides, the sheep, by the peculiarity of its bite, generally loosens the roots of the grass and occasions their spreading.  This results from the half-biting, half-tearing action of the teeth in the under jaw, in connexion with the elastic cushion of bars and ridges in the upper jaw.  They improve pastures by browsing upon plants and shrubs and eating down wild grasses, and ultimately causing the substitution of the improved and more nutritious grasses for these wild products. Linnæus found, by experiment, that sheep fed upon many more varieties of plants, and rejected fewer, (accepting 387 of 528 species of plants,) than any other animals.

It is acknowledged that English husbandry is dependent largely upon sheep for manuring. That there may be wheat in England, sheep are folded on the wheat-fields, and turnips are grown to feed the sheep.  The droppings of sheep are richer in nitrogen than those of the cow, and ferment less easily than those of the horse, containing, by the analysis of Girardin, of water, 68.17 parts; of azotized matter, 23.16; of salines, 8.13. Boussingault makes 36 parts of the excrement of sheep equal to 100 parts of farm-yard manure as a fertilizer.  Voided in the form of small, hard, round pellets, it is dispersed among and beneath the grass blades, where it loses little by evaporation until trodden into the earth. Marshall, in his "Survey of Norfolk,” calculated that a hundred sheep would fold nine acres a year, and save in manure £22 10s., or 4s. 6d. per head.

Light, silicious soils, so sandy as with difficulty to be kept from blowing away, are converted into permanent self-sustaining sheep pastures, and eventually prepared for cropping with wheat by the introduction of sheep and white clover. This grass is of a low habit, and peculiar for its tendency to spread and thicken with close grazing. In New England such soils are often improved in this way, and made to yield a profit where profit was thought to be impossible. The native habitat of the Ryland sheep in the counties of Hereford and Gloucester, in England, is upon a soil of red sand, made by abrasion of the “old red sandstone ” formation. The region is remarkable for its judicious and profitable husbandry conducted under unusual difficulties.

The improvement of pastures is rapid in proportion to the nutritive value of the feed supplied to flocks. If nourished by grass alone, the flock will return, in accelerating ratio, the virtues of the abundant succulent pasturage. But the time will come, even among the rich pastures of the west, ignored as the idea may now be, when it will be freely conceded that upon the feeding of roots, grain, or oilmeal, one or all, will depend the successful pursuit of sheep husbandry. If grain or oilmeal are fed, they should be given, not only in spring, nor yet in winter, but to some extent in the growing season. And the use of these highly nutritive products will not only add to the weight of the flesh and of the wool, but will enhance greatly the value of the manure, enabling the wool-grower to bring his farm into a high state of cultivation, with much less expense, and less liability to exhaustion, than with the use of guano or superphosphate.  English farmers have testified to the doubling of the value of their lands by the use of oil-cake in summer. One of them, Mr. W. F. Hobbs, says: “Having had experience with regard to some twenty or thirty different manures, I have come to the conclusion that oil-cake, fed the stock depastured, is the best manure for improving first-class grazing lands.”

Scarcity of labor, and cheapness of lands, have prevented to a great degree, in this country, the adoption of a system of green-feeding of flocks in winter.  It has been practiced, however, sufficiently to test its value, and must eventually prevail among all successful sheep-breeders.

The kind of roots most profitable in our soil and climate is a subject worthy of careful experiment.⁴ Mangolds, however valuable for cattle, are not desirable for sheep, though some have fed them with advantage. The yellow varieties of turnips are preferred to the white, the Swedes being very popular in England.

Kohl rabi, or turnip-cabbage, has some strong points to recommend its culture in this climate. It is better suited than turnips to a dry, hot climate, is easily transplanted, a heavy feeder, endures drought and frost well. Its nutritious value is much greater than white turnips. Its yield is probably less than that of turnips.

If three tons of Swedes are equal to one of “meadow,” or timothy hay, 43 tons to the acre of Swedes (or seven to eight tons of white turnips) would be a fair equivalent for an average acre of timothy. At forty bushels to the ton, this would be but 180 bushels of Swedes, or about 350 bushels of turnips, to the acre—less than half a crop (if properly tended) of the one, and not a third of a fair crop of the other. Upon this basis the farmer can make his own calculations, and ascertain whether the cheapness of hay, or the high prices of labor, will not be overbalanced, even in the west, by the greatly increased amount of nutriment.

Prodigious crops of turnips, with good culture, may be grown in this country, rivalling the English crops of twenty-eight to thirty-three tons, and even more in exceptional cases, per acre. In Scotland, the average product has been stated at eighteen tons per acre, but the statistics of 1855, with an average of 448,372, give 6,461,476 tons, or nearly 14½ tons per acre. Ireland made an average for eight years, from 1851 to 1858, of 13½ tons per acre. It is a fact lamented by English agriculturists, that the acreage of their crops has never been given; but a still larger product of turnips is estimated (in the absence of government returns) for England proper.

The Scotch generally cultivate Swedes in ridges, say twenty-seven inches apart, and from ten to fifteen inches apart in the row, manuring, as do the English, with farm-yard manure, Peruvian guano, and superphosphate of lime.

Mr. W. G. Lewis exhibited at the South Middlesex Massachusetts) fair, in September, 1862, German sweet turnips, grown from seeds sent from the Patent Office, of which he produced thirty-seven tons to the acre.

Mr. L. Woodward, of Greenfield, New York, in 1860, produced Swedish turnips at the rate of 1,000 bushels to the acre.

Mr. A. L. McKinstry, of Chicopee, Massachusetts, in the same year, grew 400 bushels per acre, costing 3¾ cents per bushel, manuring with eight dollars’ worth of superphosphate, ashes, and plaster.

Mr. S. Edwards Todd, of Lake Ridge, New York, in 1859, obtained 800 bushels per acre, costing less than five cents per bushel.

But these cases are exceptions. The turnip meets with various and generally indifferent culture. The yield is far from what it should be. The circulars of the Department, filled and returned from every section of the country, show a remarkable disparity in product per acre; some 100 bushels per acre, very many 200 to 300; 400 to 500 are frequent; and not a few 600 or more. The average is 270 bushels of white turnips per acre, and 385 bushels of Swedes.  Mangolds, it may be well to add, show greater productiveness than turnips, averaging 496 bushels. Maine stands first in average productiveness of white turnips, averaging 565 bushels; Minnesota next, 400 bushels; Indiana and Missouri last, 172 bushels. In Swedes, New Hampshire occupies the first place, 606 bushels; Maine next, 553 bushels; Maryland last, 220 bushels.  New Hampshire produces the greatest crops of mangolds, 975; Massachusetts, 748 bushels; Kansas, 160 bushels.

These wide differences in the actual product, as shown from careful home estimates of intelligent farmers, are a better commentary on the slovenly and thriftless style of turnip culture in this country than an elaborate treatise.  Neglect of manuring, improper soils, and careless preparation of them, readily account for the widest differences.

In balancing the profits of turnip culture, it must be remembered that the superior advantages of variety of winter food for sheep, and of something to take the place of succulent grasses, and the high material value of turnips, have not here been taken into account.

It would be interesting to examine minutely the relative profit derived from sheep. The length of this essay will prevent any attempt at such analysis here. If sheep will thrive upon three per cent. of their weight daily, and produce flesh worth more in the market than pork, or beef even; if their fleeces, weighing from three to six pounds each, will average forty cents per pound; if they require less care, feed on a greater variety of herbage and shrubs, and eat their food “cleaner” than other farm stock; if they are more prolific, bring their young to the butcher, fat, in less time, and make quicker returns of the farmer’s investments, than cattle; if their manure is of more value, and in summer better distributed, than that of any other animal, then it must be evident that a profit exists in their keeping.

Intelligent farmers freely testify to their profit. The venerable John Johnson, of Geneva, New York, says that "what he has made in the last forty years has been, in a large proportion, by sheep.”  Eastern farmers report a double value of their farms through this instrumentality.

Sheep-breeders will agree with Mechi, the English farmer, in estimating a difference of twenty per cent. between the profit upon sheep and cattle, if their flesh sells at the same price. It is proposed here only to give the statement of certain correspondents, with the results of their own experience, in several sections of the country, under differing circumstances, and with different breeds of sheep. It may, of course, be expected to show, in the several cases, widely different results, illustrating the value of improved sheep very strikingly.  The great difference in profit between common Merinos or “natives,” at $3, and improved kinds, at $10 to $20 each, is partly owing to increased value in wool and mutton, and partly to their value for breeding purposes, which, if sometimes apparently speculative, is a real value, nevertheless, just so long as the need of improvement and desire for it exist. Improved breeds are found remunerative in extreme latitudes. S. Dinsmore, of Somerset county, Maine, reports that by improvements in breeding he clears $100 per year extra from the same number of sheep kept formerly at the same expense of feeding.

In 1856 from ten sheep were obtained sixteen lambs, thirteen of which brought $47 55; one buck, reserved, at $5; 31 pounds wool, at 42 cents, producing $13 02, a total of $65 57 = $6 55 per head. One of his ewes, at five years old, had brought nine lambs, eight of which sold at $55.

This exhibits a gross return of $5 68 per head, and a profit of $4 10 each.  This does not take into account the interest on the money invested; neither does it include the manure or improvement of pasture.  It should be remembered that these statements give their actual mutton and wool value, without any reference to the price of pure South Downs for feeding.

C. L. Buell, of Ludlow, Massachusetts, from seven sheep obtained seven lambs, and again seven more from the same ewes in seven months after, others producing twins once within the same period. At five months old he obtained $4 each for fat lambs. His fleeces averaged four and a half pounds. They were native ewes crossed with a grade South Down. A contributor of the “Country Gentleman” claims to have obtained from three ewes, in two years, a flock of fifteen ewes; that the wool paid their keeping; and the fifteen sold for $75, the original cost being $14.

It may be said that these facts are exceptions. Then let us refer the subject to the common sense of practical sheep-breeders, for an estimate of average results with large flocks, from their own experience. In answer to inquiries of the cost and product of a flock of one hundred ewes, addressed from this Department to certain flock-masters, responses were received from the following individuals:

Mr. Bonine’s sheep are Merinos. He says he can easily sell choice ewe lambs at $10 to $12 per head, but adds: “That is not my business; I price my sheep at wholesale.”

Mr. Ladd’s sheep are Silesian Merinos. He has averaged eight and a half pounds per fleece for ten years, with a loss of forty per cent. in washing, making washed fleeces average 5.1 pounds.

This flock is composed of “Atwood" Merinos and their grades, estimated at $6 each, instead of $3 for common; the lambs at $5 each, instead of $2; and the profit $324, instead of $103, as in estimate of Mr. Quimby.

General Goe claims to give a medium price, avoiding extremely low and very high prices. His flock is Spanish Merino. Of course, this estimate is based on the value of ewes and their lambs for breeding purposes.

The stall-feeding of cattle is practiced in all sections of the country; the feeding of hogs in the west is the means of marketing western corn; then why should not the production of mutton pay? It does, as examples show, pay largely; yet the practice of feeding sheep is confined to a few, and is almost entirely unknown at the west.

Where should it be practiced? First, in the vicinity of cities, near to large markets, where good mutton is always in demand, and a really superior article will command a price higher than beef. There is no lack of the necessary aptitude to fatten in American flocks; instances are reported in agricultural journals, upon good authority, of a gain of half a pound per day. The price of good mutton, which is usually that which is quickest made, is higher than beef and much higher than pork; therefore enterprising farmers in the neighborhood of cities have long since found stall-feeding of sheep in winter a very pleasant and profitable business. Corn, peas, beans, oats, bran, oil-cake, roots, hay, straw, pea vines, &c., come in requisition, furnishing that variety which is the perfection of economy in fattening animals.

Nor is there good reason for confining this branch of sheep farming to the seaboard or metropolitan suburbs. Large cities are growing up in the west, three of the largest having a combined population of nearly half a million; but aside from this local demand, it can easily be proven that mutton may at least share equally with beef, pork, and whiskey, the profit of the conversion of prairie corn into products bearing transportation.  Live sheep have been freighted to New York from the west at a cost of $1 25 each, and sold at $2.  These sheep were poor, and thoughtlessly sent to market as a surplus, just as dry pastures and careless tending left them.  With three months’ feeding upon cheap corn and other abundant crops, their increased weight and better quality of mutton would have easily commanded $5 to $6, say $5 75, or $4 50, besides freight—just six times what they actually netted! It is contrary to all analogy, with other sensible farm operations, to send “sheep frames” a great distance at great expense, when palatable and juicy mutton, tempting to market-goers, might easily and profitably be put upon them, and a saving made of a large quantity of manure, worth all the hay and fodder fed to them. Would store hogs be sent away thus? Would the long-nosed and fast-running land-pikes be found to pay before being modified by corn into conservative and portly porkers?

The report upon statistics to the recent canal convention affirms that the Illinois farmer realizes but nine cents per bushel for corn sold in New England at sixty cents, or one-sixth of a cent per pound.  Then, if it required even twelve pounds of corn for one of mutton, (which it would not with good sheep,) the mutton would cost but two cents per pound. There can be only a question of comparative profit in the case as between mutton and pork or beef and mutton; and there is little doubt that, circumstances favoring, with a breed apt to fatten, a variety of feed, and the added advantage of superior manure, the stall-feeding of sheep in winter will be found largely remunerative along railroad lines throughout the west.

From many portions of the country the business of stall-feeding is reported as a profitable branch of rural industry. In Franklin county, Massachusetts, the average number fed annually in winter amounts to 15,000. In Salem county, New Jersey, according to the correspondence of this Department, 10,000 are annually purchased (a larger number than the permanent stock) by farmers, fed and sold in the fleece to Philadelphia butchers. In New England, New York, New Jersey, and eastern Pennsylvania, the business is quite generally and somewhat extensively carried on, and found more remunerative than the feeding of cattle or hogs.

Were there ample supplies of mutton breeds in the country, it would be well to advise their selection at the same price of fine-wool flocks; but wool, as well as mutton, being a valuable consideration, it cannot be entirely ignored, even in calculating the profits of feeding; the fleece, just before the time of butchering, has often, under favorable circumstances, been clipped to great advantage. Good, thrifty, “native ” sheep, large enough to receive the desired increase of flesh, and so compact and symmetrical as to insure its being profitably laid on, are properly sought, wherever they can be obtained, at the cheapest rate.

There are very fine mutton sheep obtained from Kentucky, of Down and other rapidly maturing crosses, and also from Canada, which are fattened near eastern markets, while many feeders use the most available selections from common merino flocks. The breed, where they are so mixed and various as in this country, must depend largely upon price and other circumstances. They should be free from disease and in good condition. If perfectly healthy, and in low flesh from deficient keeping, and obtainable at a low price, it may sometimes be good policy to buy such animals. Unless there is too great a disproportion in price, the best conditioned sheep that can be found should be selected.

After purchasing, which should be early in the fall, for mutton supplies of the Christmas holidays, and before the commencement of wintry weather for later butchering, immediate efforts should be directed to giving them an early start. The coming of pinching cold upon ill-fed flocks often reduces their vitality, and hinders for some time any perceptible improvement under liberal keeping. As undue exposure, amid severe cold and heavy storms, requires a large portion of the carbon of food to keep up the natural heat of the body, it follows that shelter is equivalent to a certain amount of food, and economical and necessary on that account, to say nothing of the risk to health by extremes of temperature.

Sheep should not be too closely confined or kept too warm; should be allowed a yard for exercise, with a constant supply of water, and an occasional taste of salt. Well-covered sheds, open to the south, are found to answer a good purpose, even in the climate of Canada. The yard should be kept dry with straw, or corn fodder, from which the sheep have closely eaten the blades.  The feed it is useless to prescribe with particularity, only there should be a proper proportion of fat and flesh-forming substances, as beans and oil-cake, peas and grain, clover hay and corn; feeding with highly-concentrated food the less nutritious and more bulky products, always including a proper proportion of roots, which not only give bulk, but such variety as is most conducive to the health of the digestive organs.

It is a good rule to feed little at a time and often.  Some practice feeding a little hay and grain, with turnips afterwards three times per day.  Others feed hay three times daily, with grain morning and evening, and roots at noon.  Success has attended feeding oats in the straw with turnips, alternating with turnips and peas in the straw.  Very rapid fattening may be assured with clover hay and turnips, morning and night, with a half pound of oil-cake and a pint of barley per head at noon. Feeders have secured a gain of ten to twelve pounds per month, with oats and corn in addition to straw and hay.

In short, stall-fed sheep require a dry bed, shelter from storms, airy quarters, water at will, salt frequently, food often, and in small quantities; thus kept, they will prove healthy, free from vermin, apt to fatten, and profitable.

It is not proposed to do more than hint in this place at some of the sources of profit in stall-feeding. One of its incidental advantages is found in the fact that it furnishes an interesting branch of industry for the winter months, when ordinary farm operations are suspended, and gives opportunity for valuable experiments in feeding which may yield a rich harvest In the general economy of winter keeping of farm stock. It also furnishes a convenient market for surplus farm products, and effects a saving in freightage similar to that which the manufacturer secures by using raw material upon the ground upon which it was produced. It is especially economical in comparison with cattle feeding, as it uses to advantage a greater variety of products.

One of its most positive and valuable phases of profit, east or west, in sterile or fertile districts, is assuredly found in the valuable fertilizer with which it supplies the farmer. It is a point on which all intelligent farmers will agree, but one which American farmers are very apt to ignore. English farmers understand the matter practically. They estimate the value, to them, of manure, from a ton of clover hay fed to sheep, at $9 64; from a ton of Indian corn,at $6 65; from a ton of peas, $13 38; from a ton of beans, $15 75; and from a ton of oil-cake, $19 72, which is little less than the price usually paid for cake at the oil mills of Ohio. In England, where hundreds of thousands are annually fattened for sale, fertilization is the sum total of expected profit. Feeders pay more per pound in the fall than they obtain in the winter or spring; they must feed sheep to consume their turnips, and without turnips they could scarcely procure a sufficiency of manure. On the contrary, our farmers can often buy in the fall for half the price per pound that is easily realized for fat sheep. A multitude of examples could readily be adduced.

John Johnston, of New York, once purchased several hundred Merino sheep at an average of $1 81. They were fed through the winter with half a pound of oil-cake and three-fifths of a pound of corn each per day, in addition to wheat or oat straw, at an expense of $1 63 per head for corn and cake, and sold in the spring at $6 each. This is $3 56 for straw, care, and profit—enough to satisfy any reasonable expectations.

A farmer in Springfield, Vermont, with a flock of 123, a cross of Saxon with Merino, (which ought to be regarded as furnishing a severe test of stall-feeding,) made a gross gain of $4 50 per head, and a net profit of $1 30 in feeding 20 tons of English hay and 200 bushels of corn.

The present Commissioner of Agriculture once purchased 200 sheep at $600; fed them four or five months, and sold them in the Philadelphia market for an aggregate of $2,500.

Facts might be multiplied indefinitely to prove the superior economy of sending hay, grain, fodder, and roots to market on four legs, and even to show that farmers can buy grain and other feed, sell it to their stock, and make a profit on the trade. It may not be safe in this country to follow the extreme example of the successful English experimenter, Mechi, who purchases several thousand bushels of grain yearly, in addition to his roots, peas, and beans; but experience has demonstrated the economy and profit of stall-feeding of sheep.

When carried on as a special business the production of butchers’ lambs usually involves the annual selection of ewes for the purpose, which requires no little judgment in securing good nurses, possessed.of vigorous constitutions—wide-hipped, broad, short-legged, early-maturing animals, the best that can be culled from the common flocks of the country. If the ram commences running with them in September, they will begin to drop their lambs early in February, and continue into March. They should have good pasturage. If short cropping attends the coming of winter, the careful shepherd will eke out the scanty herbage with corn, oats, or thew equivalent, that they may enter upon dry feeding and the cold season in good condition. Then they are fed With hay and a little grain or roots. The winter feed, however, it is needless to add, can be varied greatly, and a reasonable variety is found conducive to health.  As they approach the lambing season the heaviest should be separated from the flock and fed as before, being careful to give some roots, but not so many as to increase very much the secretion of milk. Breeding sheep should not be too fat; they certainly should not be poor, but the “golden mean” is much nearer the former than the latter extreme. And this may account for the different practice and counsels of sheep-breeders; some affirming that the ewes should be kept on good hay till near lambing time, and then allowed more stimulating food; others preferring to give hay with a little grain all the time, and deprecating any increase of rations. The latter course appears to be more rational upon the whole. When the lambs are three weeks old they will commence eating a little meal sprinkled in the trough, being fed in a separate pen, with an opening too small to admit their dams. At first they are allowed but little, increasing gradually until, at twelve to fifteen weeks old, they are able to eat a quart of meal each per day, when they will have attained sufficient weight and maturity to go to the shambles, and will weigh ten to twelve pounds per quarter, and readily bring from $4 to $6 each. This weight has at least been frequently attained with ease in crosses of the Down family upon "Irish smuts” or black-faced natives.  Our best lamb-growers are not satisfied with an increase of less than half a pound per day.

The ewes may be sheared and fattened after the lambs are weaned, and sold at a good profit, thus closing the account with that flock, turning the original purchase and its three-fold increase of lambs, fat and wool, into money in a brief period, producing a large quantity of valuable manure, and enabling the farmer to calculate nicely all the beneflts and profits of the enterprise.

The encouragement of woollen manufactures was so early deemed an object of first importance, that in 1645, two years after the erection of the first fulling-mill in Massachusetts, the general court of that State passed an order directing all citizens to “endeavor the preservation of such sheep as they have already, as also to procure more with all convenient speed in the several towns, by all such lawful ways and means as God shall put into their hands,” enforcing the necessity of such action in the suggestive preamble.  "Forasmuch as woollen cloth is so useful a commodity, by reason of the cold winters, and being at present scarce and dear, and likely soon to be so in parts whence we can expect to get it, by reason of the wars in Europe destroying the flocks of sheep, and killing and hindering the trade of those whose skill and labor tend to that end, and as for want of woollen cloth many poor people have suffered cold and hardship and impaired their health, and some hazarded their lives, and those who had provided their families with cotton cloth (not being able to get the other) have had some of their children much scorched with fire, yea, divers burned to death.”

Nine years later the exportation of sheep was prohibited, as well as their slaughter for the market until older than two years.

In 1656 the selectmen were by special act required to enforce the duty of spinning upon every family not otherwise employed, and “assess” families at “a spinner, a half or a quarter of a spinner,” according to circumstances, a full spinner being required to spin three pounds of linen, cotton, or woollen per week for thirty weeks in the year.

Lord Cornbury and other British statesmen, half a century later, deplored this spirit of colonial enterprise, which had produced goods that "any man may wear,” and threatened “to hurt England in a little time.” “Now,” he shrewdly observed in writing from Massachusetts, "if they begin to make serge, they will in time make coarse cloth, and then fine; we have as good fuller’s earth and tobacco-pipe clay in this province as any in the world”—a product, in the opinion of Dr. Woodward, of more value to England than the mines of Peru, and of which, its exportation prohibited, Dodsworth could declare—

Domestic manufacture of woollens increased rapidly under the fostering care of legislatures until nearly every family was supplied with a loom. The girls and women did the spinning and sometimes the weaving, while itinerant weavers were frequently employed.  From New England and New York the manufacture became prevalent in Pennsylvania and other colonies, fulling-mills abounding at Lancaster, at Columbia, in Chester, Bucks, and other counties, before the revolution.

The extreme south actually increased their imports, illustrating their singular preference for a single industrial pursuit, their ruinous policy of dependence upon foreign states for the comforts and luxuries of commerce and manufactures, and perhaps, also, their tendency to toryism and treason. May not the cherished policy of England, to keep all nations under her commercial vassalage, account for the favor with which she regards southern secession at the present hour?

After the establishment of independence finer manufactured woollens were, by degrees, attempted. In 1789 about five thousand yards of cloth were made by Colonel Jeremiah Wadsworth, at Hartford, Connecticut, some of which sold for five dollars per yard. General Washington, after visiting this mill, wrote of it, “Their broadcloths are not of first quality as yet, but they are good, as are their coatings, cassimeres, serges, and everlastings; of the first, that is, broadcloth, I ordered a suit to be sent to me at New York, and of the latter a whole piece to make breeches for my servants. All the parts of this business are performed at the manufactory except the spinning; that is done by the country people, who are paid by the cut.”

The assembly of Pennsylvania recommended to the people to abstain from eating, and butchers from killing sheep in 1775, in consequence of which 20,000 less were killed in '75 than in '74. The congress of deputies, at Annapolis, in the same year, resolved to encourage the breeding of sheep, and promote the manufacture of woollens. The first provincial congress of South Carolina offered premiums for wool cards and woollen cloth. The committee of Essex county, in Virginia, offered a bounty £50 to any person who would produce 500 pairs of men’s and women’s stockings made in the county. Similar stimulants and encouragements were applied, with considerable success, to the interesting weakling, American manufactures, in all the colonies.

The history of such a beginning and subsequent advancement would be interesting, and it is to be regretted that data for a full view of the rise and progress of this branch of manufacturing are not more generally accessible.

In the last ten years there has been an increase of woollen manufactures of fifty-one per cent.” The total product in 1860 was $58,865,963, made in 1,905 establishments, of which 453 were in New England, 748 in the middle, 227 in the southern, 479 in the western, and 2 in the Pacific States.⁵

In this aggregate of $68,865,963, 80,386,572 pounds of wool were used, an excess of 19,875,229 pounds over the entire clip of 1860. This excess was little more than half of the wool importation of that year, the remainder being used to supply domestic manufactures not enumerated in the census. This wool, of low grades mainly, is imported from South America, Mexico, and other countries. Besides this importation of the raw material, there was in 1860 an importation of woollen goods to the value of $37,936,945, an excess of $20,785, 336 over the imports of 1850—an increase of 121 per cent.

Thus, while the imports of woollens have been more than doubled, and those of unmanufactured wools have been increased in a still greater ratio, showing a heavy demand as yet unsupplied by our wool-growers, the increase of the wool crop has been but fifteen per cent., not even keeping pace with the increase «of population, which was thirty-five per cent. for the same period.

To displace this foreign manufacture of woollens would require forty millions of pounds, estimating the first cost of imported goods at ten per cent. higher than home manufactures in proportion to weight, the importations embracing a proportion of goods of the finer qualities. Thus, we use 80,000,000 pounds of wool in our home manufactures, 40,000,000 in foreign goods, making 120,000,000, or about four pounds to each individual.  It is estimated that our domestic manufactures swell this average to four and a half pounds, or 140,000,000 pounds of wool, requiring nearly sixty millions of sheep instead of less than twenty-five millions, the present number.

The wool-grower of the United States should see in these facts inducements to persevere intelligently and persistently, as well as fearlessly in the enhancement of the wool product of the country.

1.  In a recent number of "Moore’s Rural New Yorker” is the following item, illustrative of the advance in the quality of mutton and the increase in the demand:
   "With reference to the mutton value of this farm animal, we will only state that within our own recollection sheep were slaughtered by thousands in Western New York for the pelts and tallow. Less than twenty-five years ago ‘Alleghany venison,’ the title which it bore, was hawked about the streets of Rochester at nominal prices, and the seller would dispose of such of his load as remained on 1 wnd at nightfall to chandlers for manufacturing purposes.  To-day butchers declare that it requires more time, and entails more labor, to procure a meagre supply of mutton for the shambles than to obtain all other meats. In the hope that this pressure would be relieved, they put up their offerings fifty cents per one hundred pounds two weeks since.”