CROSSING FAMILIES OF MERINOS. 127 



In such crosses the high qualities of choice rams render 

 themselves eminently conspicuous even more so, relatively, 

 than in breeding among full-bloods. The descendants of 

 such rams in the second cross (% blood) are frequently more 

 valuable than those of mediocre rams in the fourth or fifth 

 cross (j-f or f blood.) 



In the matter of profit for the mere purposes of wool 

 growing for our American market these grades approach 

 the full-blood rapidly. But there never was a more prepos- 

 terous delusion than that entertained by the early French 

 breeders, that " a Merino in the fourth generation [|| blood] 

 from even the worst wooled ewes, was in every respect equal 

 to the stock of the sire." Chancellor Livingston, who asserts 

 this to have been the opinion of the French breeders, further 

 says: "No difference is now [1809] made in Europe in 

 the choice of a ram, whether he is a full-blood or fifteen- 

 sixteenths."* This undoubtedly solves problems in relation 

 to a portion of the French Merinos, which otherwise would 

 be quite inexplicable. They are, undoubtedly, grade sheep. 

 The Germans, on the other hand, refuse to the highest bred 

 grade sheep any other designation than " improved half- 

 bloods." They found, says Mr. Fleichniann, that their 

 original coarse sheep had 5,500 fibers of wool on a square 

 inch of skin ; that grades of the third or fourth Merino cross 

 have about 8,000 ; the twentieth cross 27,000 ; the perfect 

 pure blood from 40,000 to 48,000.f I do not apprehend that 

 there is any thing like an equal difference between the number 

 of fibers on a given surface of the American Merino and its 

 grades ; but in thirty years observation of such grades of every 

 rank some of them higher than the tenth cross, where there 

 is but one part of the blood of the coarse sheep to 1,023 parts 

 of Merino blood J I never have yet seen one which, in every 

 particular, equaled a full blood of the highest class. 



CROSSING DIFFERENT FAMILIES OF MERINOS. This has 

 resulted more or less favorably under different circumstances. 

 The Spaniards did not practice it. The French were the first 

 who undertook it on a comprehensive scale. They selected, 

 as we have seen, from all the Spanish families indiscriminately 



* Livingston's Essay on Sheep, p. 131. 



t See Mr. Fleichmann's article on German sheep in the Patent Office Report, 1847. 



$ Probably most persons are familiar with reckoning the degrees of blood in 

 ascending crosses but for those who are not, I will say that the first cross has 1-2 

 improved blood ; 2d, 3-4 ; 3d, 7-8 ; 4th, 15-16 ; 5th, 31-32 ; 6th, 03-64 ; 7th, 127-128 ; 8th, 

 255-256J; 9th, 511-512 ; 10th, 1023-1024, and so on. 



