Merino Sheep Ixijistht. 217 



But alas ! but few of the old landmarks remained, and 

 those in a niinons condition. 



In 1844 and 1846 Mr. Edwin Hammond, of Middlebury, 

 Vermont, purchased of Stephen Atwood, of his pure Hum- 

 phrej Merinos, in tju-ee several purchases, the babis of his 

 flock, since so widely and justly celebrated ; and for twenty 

 years he and his cotemporaries, both in the Atwood (since 

 called Infantadoes,) and the Paular branches of the Span- 

 ish Merino, made rapid strides in improvement ; an 

 improvement by " their perfect understanding and excpiisite 

 management of their material," as great as that of Boke- 

 welL, in the coarse wooled sheep of England, or Bates, in the 

 improved "■ Shorthorn.'" They converted the thin, light 

 boned, smallish and imperfectly covered sheep tliat they 

 found, into large, round, low, strong boned, well covered 

 aninuils ; " models of compactness and beauty, in form and 

 character," with which you are all so conversant ; and a 

 fleece such as the world never saw before ; a fleece to which 

 the famed '' Golden Fleece," for which Jason sailed the 

 world over, bore no comparison ; a fleece with a long, strong, 

 lustrous, even, elastic flbre of the utmost quantity, holding 

 its quality even upon head, flank, legs and belly, compact, 

 and flne to the touch ; " opening like a book," and show- 

 ing a soft, mellow, pink skin, between the cream tinted and 



water lined leaves. 



Early in tliis period the proflt of breeding Spanish Me- 

 rinos was not large ; far from it. The American people 

 had been misled and lost money in sheep. To be sure, they 

 were Sa.vony, and their loss was owing to the uufltness of 

 those sheep to the American market, and the stupid })olicy 



