THE CAUSE OF WANT OF PROLIFICACY. 225 



poor ones of any age the classes which furnish the principal 

 portion of those which do not breed* are suddenly subjected 

 to the commencement of the preceding changes, about con- 

 temporaneously with that great fall of temperature which 

 usually attends the setting in of winter, can we wonder that 

 the depressing effects of all these combined causes should 

 prevent cohabitation ? It has already been stated as a well 

 established fact, that not only low condition, but anything 

 which, for the time being, lowers the condition, tends 

 to produce that effect. Even ewes in the most suitable 

 situation for coupling, viz., in good, plump, store order and 

 improving in condition, at the time, often wholly cease to take 

 the ram in severely cold weather. And as winter advances, 

 the heats of the Merino ewe are less to be relied upon. 



Many American Merino sheep breeders, on reading this, 

 Avill say: "I have used small yards, fed generally in the 

 stables, fed nothing but dry feed in winter, for ten, fifteen, 

 or twenty years, and I have always had good success 

 in lamb raising." But what proportion of these breeders, 

 whose breeding ewes count up even to one hundred 

 and fifty, would be able to show from contemporaneous 

 records, or would dare to affirm as a matter of positive 

 recollection, that they had on the average, for any consid- 

 erable term of years, raised either 100 per cent, of lambs, or 

 any very close approximation to that number? Yet can lamb 

 raising be considered successfully carried on, or a breed to 

 have reached its highest attainable standard in this particular, 

 when a selected flock of only one hundred and fifty breeding 

 ewes can not be made annually to raise their own number 

 of lambs ? 



There is a material difference in the prolificacy of the 

 English and Merino sheep first produced, in all probability, 

 by the different modes of artificial treatment to which they were 

 subjectedf but long since established as permanent and 

 hereditary characteristics of the different breeds : but I do 

 not entertain a shadow of doubt that were the most prolific 

 English families of sheep subjected to the same winter treat- 



* If there are "dry ewes" in the flock, 1. e., those which raised no lambs the 

 preceding year, and they are allowed to become very fat, they too, are very apt not to 

 become, as the English Shepherds say, "inlambed." 



t The Spanish sheep were subjected neither to confinement nor dry feed, in the 

 winter, in Spain but there being no object to increase their number they were not 

 allowed to raise over 50 per cent, of lambs; and consequently prolificacy was not culti- 

 vated. While their constant migrations gave them extraordinary general vigor, they 

 did not tend to develop their milking properties. 



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