SHEEP HUSBANDRY IN THE SOUTH. 13 



Culture of Electoral Wools recommended. There is likely 

 to be no more appropriate place than in this connection to 

 speak of a class of wools whose culture has almost ceased in 

 this country, and has greatly declined throughout the world. 

 We refer to the exceedingly fine electoral wools, such as were 

 formerly produced by the old Saxon sheep, and at present by 

 the Silesian sheep of the same or a very similar race. They 

 are still cultivated, to a limited extent, in Silesia, Hungary, 

 and Poland, which countries produce all the superfine wools 

 used in Europe. The few wools of this class used here are 

 imported from these countries, at enormous prices. Fashion, 

 invariably revolving in great cycles, always repeats herself in 

 time. Superfine broadcloths, and other tissues demanding 

 the finest fibre, will again be in vogue. The electoral wools 

 will secure prices, as they have never yet done, proportionate 

 to their high cost of production. On account of the delicacy 

 of the animals producing them, these wools cannot be suc- 

 cessfully grown at the North ; as we know personally from 

 observation on the paternal farm in Maine, where their cul- 

 ture was formerly attempted with the utmost energy, but 

 with such poor results as to cause their abandonment. In 

 the mild climate of the South, their successful culture is 

 assured beyond all question. This is proved by the letter 

 last quoted. Mr. Watts, of South Carolina, in his communi- 

 cation elsewhere given at length, says: 



" I have now on my table a Silesian wool, measuring, say, 1,800 

 hairs to the inch, which cost the consumer here one dollar and fifty 

 cents in gold per pound. With none of the ridiculously extreme care 

 which the European growers of the electoral wool exercise in their 

 flocks, Mark Cockerill, of Tennessee (near Nashville), has raised Sax- 

 ony wools of a fineness of 2,000 hairs to the inch, and could sell it at 

 a handsome profit at one dollar per pound. In fact, Mr. Cockerill 

 claims that there is more margin of profit in it than in the growth of 

 more ordinary wool." 



These wools are designated in Germany as nolle wools. 

 Their successful culture was deemed a fit employment for 

 noblemen of high birth ; and the princes of Hungary, we are in- 



