Merino Shkep Industry. 219 



wants, a sheep that showed itself possessed of all the merits 

 of the French Merino without its defects. 



The profits were boimtif ul and the harvest large, increased 

 and enhanced, it is true, by our civil war, until the demand 

 was greater than the supply, and prices such as sheep had 

 never reached before. Don't blame the breeders for that ; 

 their prices were their protection. Too large, says one. 

 Aye, too large they might have been ; but they were for a 

 real thing, an article that was truly and demonstrably mer- 

 itorious. For a sheep was produced that yielded a pound 

 of wool in the grease to four pounds of carcass, and a pound 

 of clean, scoured wool, fit for the cards, to a little over 

 twelve pounds of carcass, and that, too, so fine and even 

 that nearly one half was of one kind, known to the trade 

 as No. 1 ; a wool that enters most largely into tlie manu- 

 facture of the best American cloths. Individual sheep 

 sheared as high as twenty pounds for ewes and thirty pomids 

 for rams per head. 



Flocks of pure Spanish Merinos were established in many 

 parts of the country, breeders buying a few ewes and their 

 stock rams in Vermont, often replenishing their stock, as 

 they could afford (for these sheep were costly, and the good 

 ones are yet), in the laudable endeavor to become the ram 

 breeders of their own sections, and improve the large fiocks 

 of grades, and re-Spanish tlie many fiocks of Saxons ; rais- 

 ing the average from two to six and even eight pounds of 

 wool per head, for large fiocks kept for the purpose ^f wool- 

 growing alone. 



But even this had an end, for after enjoying this unprece- 

 dented prosperity until about 1865 or 'C6, the over produc- 



