98 APPENDIX. 



And here, in closing, let me say, in view of some of the industrial 

 wants of the country, I think this last section of our State, the Blue 

 Ridge Mountains, can, with moderate care and expense, most success- 

 fully furnish all the facilities needed for the best combing-wools, and 

 the alpaca and Angora goat. In fact, I have no doubt on this point. 

 Even here, seventy-five miles from the mountains, I have for six years 

 grown most successfully the Angora goat, whose flesh I regard as 

 superior to any mutton ; and whose fleece, properly handled, could 

 there be made more profitable than any wool-growing. This I can 

 say from actual, careful experience with the Angoras which are of Asia 

 Minor stock, meeting here few obstacles to their profitable breeding ; 

 and which, in the Blue Ridge just beyond me, would find an exact 

 counterpoint of their native soil and climate. Aside from their flesh 

 and wool, there is another advantage they offer, which in the moun- 

 tains beyond would be most valuable. In a cross I have made with 

 a pure Angora buck and a Maltese ewe-goat, I have raised a ewe-goat 

 that will give four quarts per day of as good milk as any cow on my 

 plantation. The feed of one of my cows will keep twelve goats. My 

 cows must have certain food, or they will not thrive. My goats will 

 eat any thing almost, and do well ; and with this advantage, also, that 

 their milk and butter are not in any way affected by their diet. 



It is not, therefore, at all an open question with me, after years of prac- 

 tical experience, whether the Angora, alpaca, and kindred races of the 

 goat tribes would thrive in our Blue Ridge. They would be more 

 profitable in that locality than any other branch of husbandry. 



If the present status of the wool-growing industry can be main- 

 tained, we can, in my judgment, grow all the varieties and product 

 needed for home consumption, from the cheapest carpet-wools to those 

 needed for our extra-fine broadcloths, imitation cashmeres, or the cloths 

 for piano-manufacture consumption. 



I have now on my table a Silesian wool, measuring, say, eighteen 

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

 fifty cents, in gold, per pound. With none of that ridiculously extreme 

 care which the growers of Electoral wool exercise in their flocks, 

 Mark Cockerell, of Tennessee (near Nashville), has raised Saxony 

 wools of a fineness of over two thousand hairs to the inch, and could sell 

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

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

 mere ordinary wool. 



Our country's enterprise, demand, climate, soils, and constantly im- 

 proving animals, if present encouragement in wool-growing is not 



