FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 11 



is equal to 1.037 Ibs. avoirdupois ; the Austrian foot 

 to 1.234 English feet. 



Mr. Livingston, in describing the Spanish Merino 

 of his day, as compact and short-legged, took for his 

 standard of comparison, doubtless, the gaunt, tall 

 sheep of America ; and Colonel Humphreys's descrip- 

 tion, sent to the Massachusetts Society for promoting 

 Agriculture, requires the same explanation. Most 

 British writers, with their eyes on their own mutton- 

 breeds, fall into the opposite extreme. Petri's niQas- 

 urements show that the Spanish sheep were far less 

 compact than their American descendants, though 

 they ran to no extraordinary excess in the opposite 

 direction. 



We should gather the impression from Livingston's 

 remarks and Humphreys expressly says that they 

 were broad-chested.* Compared with other sheep, 

 or their own descendants of the present day, this was 

 quite otherwise. The concurrent testimony of both 

 writers and observers, who had more practical 

 acquaintance with the points of an animal's carcass 

 than either of the above distinguished gentlemen, as 

 well as my own observations thirty years ago, when 



Should be no greater difference in the "circumference of .the belly" 

 between the Spanish and American sheep in the table; and one 

 would infer that a good portion of the weight of the former must be 

 made up of a belly so disproportioned in size. But I have no doubt 

 that Petri measured their circumference in full fleece, and without any 

 compression of the wool. I shall reserve any further comparisons 

 until I describe the improved American Merino. 



* " The neck short, the chest broad. The members more compact 

 and thick than those of our former breed of sheep ; and the carcass is 

 thought to have smaller bones, and to be more rounded in the hinder 

 part." Colonel Humphreys's Letter to Massachusetts Society for Pro- 

 moting Agriculture. 



