8 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



ewe, which was then immediately removed. Some of 

 these nineteen-year old ewes had fine healthy lambs by 

 their side. 



The foddering season where Mr. Cockrill lives, which is 

 about latitude 36°, does not average over three months a 

 year. He feeds hay, millet, oats in sheaf, corn fodder, 

 and a moderate supply of Southern corn, by one gill a day, 

 which Mr. Allen says in his note to my article in the 

 March No., is not so oily as Northern corn. At any rate, 

 Mr. Cockrill finds it good feed for his sheep, and is well 

 paid for feeding a moderate supply, by an increased 

 quantity and quality of wool, besides the advantage of 

 having the ewes in fine condition at the lambing season, 

 which is in April, and after the grass has got a good start. 

 A visit to the old shepherd is not only pleasant but profit- 

 able. I have scarcely spent a day more satisfactorily 

 than while riding one of his beautiful blood horses over 

 his place, and examining his flocks, and listening to the 

 interesting and instructive conversation of one of so much 

 experience and good sense. 



Mr. Cockrill has a number of sheep which he drove 

 when he moved his flock from Tennessee to Mississippi. 

 In 1835 he sold his cotton plantation with the intention 

 of quitting the business, and following that of wool-grow- 

 ing solely, and brought up his flock and drove them to 

 Lexington, Ky., in search of a home, which he did not find 

 to suit himself, until he returned to his own native hills 

 on the Cumberland. Notwithstanding all this driving in 

 a warm climate and hot summer, he takes pride in the 

 fact that some of his sheep on exhibition, won the prize 

 cup, over some of the pampered flock of Henry Clay and 

 other wool-growers of Kentucky, that fall. His original 

 fine-woolled sheep are from a Saxony importation of 

 1824. His fine clip of 1844 averaged 621/0 cents a pound, 

 and was sold for shipment to France. He has some sheep 

 which he has made by crossing Saxony and Bakewell to- 

 gether, that for long silky fleeces exceed anything I have 

 ever seen. All the long-woolled sheep are sheared twice 



