30 FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 



and so far as this country is concerned they have re- 

 ceived the distinctive name of Silesian Merinos. 



I will reserve a description of this flock, until the 

 subject of importations of Merinos into the United 

 States is specially considered. 



Introduction of Merinos into the United States. 



In 1793, William Foster, of Boston, Massachusetts, 

 being on his return from a residence at Cadiz, in 

 Spain, " with much difficulty and risk" got out of that 

 kingdom, and brought home with him three Merino 

 sheep two ewes and one ram. Their fate was some- 

 what characteristic of American knowledge of sheep 

 at that time. Mr. Foster writes: "Being about to 

 leave this country for France, soon after my arrival 

 in Boston, I presented these sheep to Mr. Andrew 

 Craigie, of Cambridge, who, not knowing their value 

 at that time, ' simply ate them,' as he told me years 

 after when I met him at an auction buying a Merino 

 ram for $1,000."* 



In 1801, Dupont de Nemours, the head of the com- 

 mission appointed by the French government to select, 

 in Spain, the large flock of Merinos given up by the 

 latter by the treaty of Basle, together with a Mr. De- 

 lessert, a Parisian banker, shipped four ram lambs to 

 America, three of them intended for farms owned by 

 those gentlemen in the United States, and the fourth 



* George Livermore, Esq., of Boston, writes me: "Mr. Foster is 

 still living at the advanced age of nearly ninety years, and I have 

 this day called on him, and heard from his own lips an account of his 

 importation of Merino sheep substantially the same as that given 

 above (January 20, 1862)." 



