218 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



full-blood Merino, from the fact that it shrinks less, and 

 from the further fact that it is the fashion to wear coarser 

 cloth than in former times. There are very few men in this 

 assembly who have fine broadcloth coats on. Almost every 

 coat you see is made from a coarse-woolled sheep. Some- 

 times fashion makes a great deal of difference with regard to 

 the value of wool. Our friend, speaking of combing-wool, 

 classed the Leicester and Cotswold as combing-wool. The 

 improved Southdown is also combing. A long-woolled sheep 

 crossed with a Merino produces a wool to-day which is more 

 valuable than the wool from a Cotswold or Leicester. For- 

 merly, long-woolled fleeces brought the highest price, from 

 the fact that a lustre wool was wanted to imitate that class 

 of goods which the ladies used to wear so much, alpacas ; for 

 you all understand that there were ten times as many goods 

 sold in the New- York market under the name of " alpaca " 

 as there was alpaca wool in the world to make them from. 

 The greatest part of these goods was made from long wool. 

 I have been into Canada, and bought combing-wool that cost 

 seventy cents a pound laid down here, where a cross-breed 

 of wool like this on the stand would not have brought fifty 

 cents. To-day those two cross-bred fleeces would bring 

 more in Boston market than any full-blood fleece you could 

 take there. A great many years ago I combed the finest 

 Saxony wool by hand, for which I received fifty cents a 

 pound simply for the labor I put into it. That wool now 

 can be combed for about a cent a pound. 



In regard to what the gentleman said about buying wool 

 on the sheep's back, that is an undesirable thing. It acts 

 more favorably to the seller than the buyer. I remember 

 buying one year a large amount of wool on the sheep's backs ; 

 and, when it was delivered, it was worth a hundred thousand 

 dollars more than I paid for it. That was owing to the fact 

 that it began to go up before shearing, and continued to go 

 up : consequently, there seemed to be safety in that. But it 

 left the buyer at the mercy of the farmer. He could put 

 his dead wool into his fleeces, or any thing else. It may not 

 be pleasant for farmers to hear such a statement ; but there 

 are unpleasant things that we hear sometimes, and sometimes 

 the truest are the hardest to bear. 



In buying wool, particularly in some sections of the coun- 



