siiEEr. 323 



Bake well, which bore wool 14 inches in length, soft and silky, 

 and admirably suited to combing. They were called the 

 Arlington sheep, but they have long since become incorporated 

 \\ qh the other flocks of the country. 



THE MERINO. This is undoubtedly among the most 

 ancient race of sheep extant. The loose descriptions and 

 indefinite generalities of the ancient writers, leave much to 

 conjecture on this point ; yet we have a few passages from 

 Pliny, Columella and some other Roman authors, which leave 

 little doubt that the Merino was bred in their age, and had 

 even been introduced into Italy from Greece. It is a matter 

 of history, that the Greeks had choice breeds of sheeps at an 

 early day, which they might have derived from Egypt, Tyre 

 and Asia Minor, as they were, intimately connected in com- 

 merce with those countries, where the woolen manufacture 

 early reached great perfection. It is supposed that the cele- 

 brated Argonautic expedition, in quest of the golden fleece, 

 undertaken by the Greeks nearly 1300 years before Christ, 

 resulted in procuring a valuable race of sheep from Colchis, 

 in the Euxine. However this may be, it is certain that when 

 Augustus extended his peaceful sceptre over half the known 

 world, the Romans were in possession of some flocks, bearing- 

 fleeces of exceeding fineness and beauty. They had been 

 reared in the province of Apulia on the south-east coast of 

 Italy, and were called Tarentine, from the capital of the prov- 

 ince. Here then may have been one branch of the Merino 

 family. Another is undoubtedly described by Pliny, who 

 says, " the red Jleece B&tica," which comprises the modern 

 Spanish provinces of Jaen, Cordova, Seville, Andalusia and 

 Granada, " was of still superior quality and had no fellow." 

 All the Spanish coast on the Mediterranean, of which Baetica 

 formed a considerable part, was early colonized by the enter- 

 prising Greeks ; and this red Jleece that had no fellow, was 

 probably introduced by them at an early day, and by their 

 desendants had been carried to a still higher degree of per- 

 fection than that of Apulia. Columella, the uncle of the writer 

 on agriculture, a wealthy emigrant to Spain, from Italy, A. D. 

 30, carried with him some of the Tarentine sheep, and thus 

 ridded to the tine-wooled sheep of Spain. These two ancient 

 streams, united perhaps with a third, from the more ancient 

 stock of the Euxine, (for Strabo assert that some of the finest 

 wooled snoop wore brought from that region in his time, and 

 sold for the enormous sum, of $750,) flowed on in an unin- 

 terrupted current, over that broad country, and brought down 



