FRENCH MERINOS. 37 



the latter, and correspondingly unprofitable in a market where 

 no adequate discrimination is made between clean and dirty 

 wools. 



" The only really weak point of the best French Merino as 

 a pure wool producing animal, is the want of that hardiness 

 which adapts it to our changeable climate and to our systems 

 of husbandry. In this particular it is to the American Merino 

 what the great pampered Short-Horn of England is to the 

 little, hardy, black cattle of the Scotch Highlands what the 

 high-fed carriage horse, sixteen hands high, groomed and 

 attended in a wainscoted stable, is to the Sheltie that feeds 

 among the moors and mosses, and defies the tempests of the 

 Orkneys. The French sheep has not only been highly kept 

 and housed from storm and rain and dew for generations, but 

 it has been bred aAvay from the normal type of its race. The 

 Dishley sheep of Mr. Bakewell are not a more artificial variety, 

 and all highly artificial varieties become comparatively delicate 

 in constitution."* 



The French Merino, if well selected, has always proved 

 profitable in this country, where the French, or an equally 

 fostering system of management, has been faithfully kept up 

 but by far the largest portion of buyers-have not kept up such 

 a system, and consequently their sheep have rapidly deterio- 

 rated. Where the rams have been worked hard and exposed 

 to rough vicissitudes of weather, they have frequently 

 perished before the close' of the first year. These facts 

 account for that reaction which has taken place against this 

 variety in the minds of many of our farmers. And the tide of 

 prejudice has been enormously swelled by the impositions of 

 a class of importers. It creates a smile to recall to memory 

 the great, gaunt, shaggy monsters, with hair on their necks 

 and thighs projecting three or four inches beyond the wool 

 mongrels probably of the second or third cross between 

 French Merinos and some long-wooled and huge-bodied 

 variety of mutton sheep which were picked up in France 

 and hawked about this country by greedy speculators, who 

 knew that, at that time, size and " wrinkles" would sell any 

 thing ! 



I regret that Mr. Patterson's absence in California has 

 prevented me from obtaining original drawings of some of 



*I quote this paragraph from my Report on Fine -Wool Husbandry, 1862, 

 because Mr. Taintor, the Messrs. Allen, and several other distinguished breeders and 

 advocates of French Sheep, wrote to me expressing their entire satisfaction with my 

 description of that breed in the Report; and the above quotation may therefore be set 

 down as res adjudicata. 



