CHAPTER II. 



INTEODUOTION OP PDTE-WOOLED SHEEP INTO THE 

 UNITED STATES, 



EARLY IMPORTATIONS OP SPANISH, FRENCH AND SAXON 

 MEKINOS. 



SPANISH MEKINOS INTRODUCED. Wm. Foster, of Boston, 

 Massachusetts, imported three Merino sheep from Spain into 

 that city in 1793. They were given to a friend, who killed 

 them for mutton! In 1801 M. Dupont de Nemours, and a 

 French banker named Delessert, sent four ram lambs to the 

 United States. All perished on the passage but one, which 

 was used for several years in New York, and subsequently 

 founded some excellent grade flocks for his owner, E. I. 

 Dupont, near Wilmington, Delaware. He was of fine form, 

 weighed 138 Ibs., and yielded 8J Ibs. of brook-washed 

 wool, the heaviest fleece borne by any of the early imported 

 Merinos of which I have seen any account.* The same year, 

 Seth Adams, of Zanesville, Ohio, imported into Boston a pair 

 of Spanish sheep which had been brought from Spain into 

 France. I know nothing of their later history. In 1802, Mr. 

 Livingston, American Minister in France, sent home two 

 pairs of French Merinos, purchased from the Government 

 flock at Chalons. The rams appear from their recorded 

 weights to have been larger than Spanish rams, but a picture 

 of one of them which is extant exhibits no difference of form, 

 and I have always learned from those who saw them, that 

 they bore no resemblance to the modern French Merinos. 

 Mr. Livingston subsequently imported a French ram from the 

 Rambouillet flock. This eminent public benefactor was too 

 much engrossed in a multitude of great undertakings to give 



* As Dupont de Nemours was the head of the Commission appointed by the 

 French Government to select in Spain the flocks of Merinos given up by the latter by 

 the Treaty of Basle, I conjecture that this ram was from the original Spanish, and 

 not from the French stock. 



